Explore "The Riddle of Wreck" by Helen Gray Cone on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Dark hemlocks, seventy and seven, / High on the hill-slope sigh in dream, / With plumy heads in heaven; / They silver the sunbeam.
One broken body of a tree, / Stabbed through and slashed by lightning keen, / Unsouled, and grim to see, / Hangs o'er the hushed ravine.
A hundred masts, a hundred more, / Crowd close against the sunset-fires. / Their late adventure o'er, / They mingle with the spires.
But one is lying prone, alone, / Where gleaming gulls to seaward sweep, / White sand of burial blown / In sheets about its sleep.
When lightning's leashed, and sea is still, / Ye sacrificial mysteries dread, / Scapegoats of shore and hill, / Your riddle may be read.