Explore "Rafe's Chasm" by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
CAPE ANN, SEPTEMBER SURF. 1882.
White fire upon the gray-green waste of waves, / The low light of the breaker flares. Ah, see! / Outbursting on a sky of steel and ice, / The baffled sun stabs wildly at the gale. / The water rises like a god aglow, / Who all too long hath slept, and dreamed too sure, / And finds his goddess fled his empty arms. / Silent, the mighty cliff receives at last / That rage of elemental tenderness, / The old, omnipotent caress she knows. / Yet once the solid earth did melt for her / And, pitying, made retreat before her flight; / Would she have hidden her forever there? / Or did she, wavering, linger long enough / To let the accustomed torrent chase her down? / Over the neck of the gorge, / I cling. Lean desperately! / He who feared a chasm's edge / Were never the one to see / The torment and the triumph hid / Where the deep surges be. / I pierce the gulf; I sweep the coast / Where wide the tide swings free; / I search as never soul sought before. / There is not patience enough in all the shore, / There is not passion enough in all the sea, / To tell my love for thee.