in his ancient choir, and on bare plains, where only the surly sage brush 

 leaned prone before the gale, and on lakes, where water tumbled like 

 romping children when the winds frisked with them in gay moods of 

 laughter and romping, or when the winds were in outrageous anger and 

 plowed the fair waters with the share of the hurricane, and in forests, 

 where the paths are narrow and very dim and shadows are many and 

 sunshine rare O the goings of the winds in such a wood when leaves 

 flutter, as half in dream, and the sound sobs like remote surf, and winds 



pass still, 



"Fainter onward, like wild birds that change 

 Their season in the nigh* and wail their way 

 From cloud to cloud," 



, and on headlands of the 



old sad ocean, where 

 Mount Desert rocks, ban- 

 nered with pine-trees 

 fronted by the sea (rocks 

 naked as the strength of 

 death) or on headlands of 

 the Golden Gate fronting 

 burning sunsets and the 

 far and barren reaches of 

 the affable Pacific, and 

 on cliffs of the Isle of 

 Mona, where heather 

 mixes honey with ocean winds and rocks lean darkly over Spanish 

 Head, fruitful of shipwrecks, and against whose sword edges Philip's 

 fleet proved but a feeble jest on such headlands have I heard the 

 winds and gloried in their tumults as in the coming of a friend; and 

 many a night have I walked steamer decks to watch the marching 

 stars and hear the regurgitations of multitudinous waves a-sobbing; or 

 in winter in the city, when cold winds keyed their voices to distress 

 like beggars gaunt and cold, and shrieked like despair which had for- 

 gotten laughter, when the thin-clad and well-clad hurried home as 

 half afraid, and children play indoors, and snows whip up alley-ways and 

 down crowded half-quieted streets (seeing a storm makes its own 

 calm), and down chimneys with singing like a last minstrel, or spits in 

 your face like an indignant beggar to whom you have refused charity, 

 or tender summer winds which stray down where long marsh grasses 

 grow in hearing of the sea. 



100 



THE SURF 



