By The Sea

On either hand
A sweep of tawny sand
With gentle curve extending, smooth and wide,
On which bold rocks look down
With dark and sullen frown,
Slopes out to meet the fast incoming tide.

The sunbeams leap
And frolic o’er the deep,
And where their light is most intensely pour’d,
Strike from its surface keen
Flashes of diamond sheen,
Dazzling the eyes that gaze out thitherward.

A cloud or two
Drifts lightly ‘mid the blue;
And, like a faint white blot upon the sky,
Up yonder you can trace
The day moon’s dim drowned face,
Whose light will flood all heaven by-and-by.

The rythmical
Hoarse sounds that rise and fall,
Thund’rous, upon the ear from out at sea,
The tumult nearer land,
And splash upon the sand
Of breaking waves, compose one harmony.