60 LOCAL SCENERY : SHARROW GROT. 



Arises from the bosom of the sea, 



In strength and simple elegance unmatched, 



A lonely fabric* crowned with a bright star 



Which all night long from the horizon's verge 



Scatters its guardian beam. Erected there 



By Smeaton's skill to show the mariner 



How near him cowers Destruction, though his home 



His own green fields are rising on his view. 



Even the bold bosom that through year and year 

 Has braved the tempest, from the shuddering North 

 To the hot Line, feels something like a dread 

 When, gliding past this lonely rock of death, 

 He thinks how oft the last exhausted cry 

 Of agonizing pain rose near and moaned, 

 Over the troubled sea, like a wild sound 

 That starts the clouded silentness of night, 

 At intervals of slumber, while we pause 

 Anxious, yet fearful, to conceive its cause. 



How many a prayer 

 How many a benjson is breathed for thee, 

 Fair Britain ! from the lips of foreign men 

 Whose ships at midnight, on the middle wave, 

 Draw near the ray of this lone life-tower's light 

 Shining serene when all the ocean world 

 Heaves in the darkness blind. 



Stern, and out-rushing with its barren front 

 To meet the billows, on one side appears 

 The chapel-crowned Ramef ; beheld from far 

 When wearied with his long, monotonous way 

 On the immeasurable main, the voyager 

 From the tall mast essays to find his home 

 On the blue line of coast. Around its base 

 In surging ire, lashed by the boisterous winds, 

 The host of waters, in a headlong swell 

 Of hoar sublimity, expend their might ! 

 Howling antagonist, with rugged crags 

 That rise, a black, impenetrable mass 

 To check their savage sweep : Exasperate 



* The Eddystone Lighthouse. 



t The Rame is a promontory which separates Plymouth Sound 

 from Whitsand Bay. 



