Grey watcher of the changeful tides that press
Above the buried shores of Lyonesse
Lone sentinel that stands
Around thy vigils dreamily
Washes the Cornish sea,
And laughing Springtime all about thee spills
Her early primroses and daffodils.
Sometimes aloof from a phantasmal coast
Thou gloomest in the fog, a sheeted ghost;
Sometimes the morning’s rose
Quivers and glows,
Or westering sunlight’s vision of desire
Sets thee afire,
While lazily the boats around thy quay
Sway to the seabirds and the lapping sea.
But when the clouds with sullen doomful black
Have piled their massy bulwarks at thy back,
And the swift sundown lights
Thy pinnacled heights.
Thou art an alter of gold
Flash of the Eternal on a secular doom
Love soaring stainless from a sea of gloom.
A.L.Salmon
St. Michael’s Mount
CORNOVIA 