Slowly and heavily
Grows the green water-mound;
But drawing ever nigher,
Towering ever higher,
Swollen with an inward rage
Naught but ruin can assuage,
Swift, now, without sound,
Creeps stealthily
Up to the shore--
Creeps, creeps and undulates;
As one dissimulates
Till, swayed by hateful frenzy,
Through passion grown immense, he
Bursts forth hostilely;
And rising, a smooth billow--
Its swelling, sunlit dome
Thinned to a tumid ledge
With keen, curved edge
Like the scornful curl
Of lips that snarl--
O'ertops itself and breaks
Into a raving foam;
So springs upon the shore
With a hungry roar;
Its first fierce anger slakes
On the stony shallow;
And runs up on the land,
Licking the smooth, hard sand,
Relentless, cold, yet wroth;