ON THE SOUTH COAST

TO THEODORE WATTS


Hills and valleys where April rallies his radiant squadron of
flowers and birds,
Steep strange beaches and lustrous reaches of fluctuant sea that
the land engirds,
Fields and downs that the sunrise crowns with life diviner than
lives in words,

Day by day of resurgent May salute the sun with sublime acclaim,
Change and brighten with hours that lighten and darken, girdled
with cloud or flame;
Earth's fair face in alternate grace beams, blooms, and lowers, and
is yet the same.

Twice each day the divine sea's play makes glad with glory that
comes and goes
Field and street that her waves keep sweet, when past the bounds of
their old repose,
Fast and fierce in renewed reverse, the foam-flecked estuary ebbs
and flows.

Broad and bold through the stays of old staked fast with trunks of
the wildwood tree,
Up from shoreward, impelled far forward, by marsh and meadow, by
lawn and lea,