The Complete Poetical Works of George MacDonald. George MacDonald

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       To the last lonely point where the green mass

       Arose and sank, heaved slow and forceful. There

       She shuddered and recoiled. Thus, for a time,

       Sport-slave of power occult, she came and went,

       Betwixt the shore and sea alternating,

       Drawn ever to the greedy lapping lip,

       Then, terror-stung, driven backward: there it lay,

       The heartless, cruel, miserable deep,

       Ambushed in horror, with its glittering eye

       Still drawing her to its green gulfing maw!

      But every ocean hath its isles, each woe

       Its scattered comfortings; and this was one

       That often came to her—that she, wave-caught,

       Must, in the wash of ever-shifting waters,

       In some good hour sure-fixed of pitiful fate,

       All-conscious still of love, despite the sea, Float over some stray bone, some particle, Which far-diffused sense would know as his: Heart-glad she would sit down, and watch the tide Slow-growing—till it reached at length her feet, When, at its first cold touch, up she would spring, And, ghastful, flee, with white-rimmed sightless eye.

      But still, where'er she fled, the sea-voice followed;

       Whisperings innumerable of water-drops

       Would grow together to a giant cry;

       Now hoarse, half-stifled, pleading, warning tones,

       Now thunderous peals of billowy, wrathful shouts,

       Called after her to come, and make no pause.

       From the loose clouds that mingled with the spray,

       And from the tossings of the lifted seas,

       Where plunged and rose the raving wilderness,

       Outreaching arms, pursuing, beckoning hands,

       Came shoreward, lengthening, feeling after her.

       Then would she fling her own wild arms on high,

       Over her head, in tossings like the waves,

       Or fix them, with clasped hands of prayer intense,

       Forward, appealing to the bitter sea.

       Sometimes she sudden from her shoulders tore

       Her garments, one by one, and cast them out

       Into the roarings of the heedless surge,

       In vain oblation to the hungry waves.

       As vain was Pity's will to cover her;

       Best gifts but bribed the sea, and left her bare.

       In her poor heart and brain burned such a fire

       That all-unheeded cold winds lapped her round,

       And sleet-like spray flashed on her tawny skin.

       Her food she seldom ate; her naked arms

       Flung it far out to feed the sea; her hair

       Streamed after it, like rooted ocean-weed

       In headlong current. But, alas, the sea

       Took it, and came again—it would have her! And as the wave importunate, so despair, Back surging, on her heart rushed ever afresh: Sickening she moaned—half muttered and half moaned— "She winna be content; she'll hae mysel!"

      But when the night grew thick upon the sea,

       Quenching it almost, save its quenchless voice,

       Then, half-released until the light, she rose,

       And step by step withdrew—as dreaming man,

       With an eternity of slowness, drags

       His earth-bound, lead-like, irresponsive feet

       Back from a sleeping horror, she withdrew.

       But when, upon the narrow beach at last,

       She turned her back upon her hidden foe,

       It blended with her phantom-breeding brain,

       And, scared at very fear, she cried and fled—

       Fled to the battered base of the old tower,

       And round the rock, and through the arched gap

       Into the yawning blackness of the vault—

       There sank upon the sand, and gasped, and raved.

       Close cowering in a nook, she sat all night,

       Her face turned to the entrance of the vault,

       Through which a pale light shimmered—from the eye

       Of the great sleepless ocean—Argus more dread

       Than he with hundred lidless watching orbs,

       And slept, and dreamed, and dreaming saw the sea.

       But in the stormy nights, when all was dark,

       And the wild tempest swept with slanting wing

       Against her refuge, and the heavy spray

       Shot through the doorway serpentine cold arms

       To seize the fore-doomed morsel of the sea,

       She slept not, evermore stung to new life

       By new sea-terrors. Now it was the gull:

       His clanging pinions darted through the arch,

       And flapped about her head; now 'twas a wave

       Grown arrogant: it rushed into her house,

       Clasped her waist-high, then out again and away

       To swell the devilish laughter in the fog,

       And leave her clinging to the rocky wall,

       With white face watching. When it came no more,

       And the tide ebbed, not yet she slept—sat down,

       And sat unmoving, till the low gray dawn

       Grew on the misty dance of spouting waves,

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