Here you will find the Poem The Grotto of poet Francis Scarfe
The sea still plunges where as naked boys We dared the currents and the racing tides That stamped red weals of fury on our thighs, Yet did not know our first love was the sea That rolled like colts between our shining knees, While under us the sands in golden curls Coiled round our bodies like the plaits of girls. We came oblique to passion on that shore Identified with our blind will to danger, As when we explored the slipping walls of caves Booming with dark more fearful than the waves Whose silence magnified the heart's deep roar Till senses beat that were asleep before, And in ourselves we recognized a stranger. Or when we scaled by Frenchman's Bay the cliff No man has dared though boys there in the night Still prove their manhood on its hostile side That was our climb from innocence to life; And yet, if I could be there once again, My love, I'd pause amazed among the gulls, Afraid of both the triumphs and the falls. In sea and grotto where we found our hearts Our youth remained, and all our days return In dream and vision to the mocking sea Where womanhood and manhood proudly stirred Within our silence like a singing bird, And never a dawning day will break as pure As our grave adoration, immature.
