High ?mid the shelves of a grey cliff, that yet 
Riseth in Babylonian mass above, 
In a benched cleft, as in the mouldered chair 
Of grey-beard Time himself, I sit alone, 
And gaze with a keen wondering happiness 
Out o?er the sea. Unto the circling bend 
That verges Heaven, a vast luminous plain 
It stretches, changeful as a lover?s dream? 
Into great spaces mapped by light and shade 
In constant interchange?either `neath clouds 
The billows darken, or they shimmer bright 
In sunny scopes of measureless expanse. 
?Tis Ocean dreamless of a stormy hour, 
Calm, or but gently heaving;?yet, O God! 
What a blind fate-like mightiness lies coiled 
In slumber, under that wide-shining face! 
While o?er the watery gleam?there where its edge 
Banks the dim vacancy, the topmost sails 
Of some tall ship, whose hull is yet unseen, 
Hang as if clinging to a cloud that still 
Comes rising with them from the void beyond, 
Like to a heavenly net, drawn from the deep 
And carried upward by ethereal hands