Jetsom

Where Gerennius' beacon stands
High above Pendower sands;
Where, about the windy Nare,
Foxes breed and falcons pair;
Where the gannet dries a wing
Wet with fishy harvesting,
And the cormorants resort,
Flapping slowly from their sport
With the fat Atlantic shoal,
Homeward to Tregeagle's Hole--
Walking there, the other day,
In a bight within a bay,
I espied amid the rocks,
Bruis'd and jamm'd, the daintiest box,
That the waves had flung and left
High upon an ivied cleft.
Striped it was with white and red,
Satin-lined and carpeted,
Hung with bells, and shaped withal
Like the queer, fantastical
Chinese temples you'll have seen
Pictured upon white Nankin,
Where, assembled in effective
Head-dresses and odd perspective,
Tiny dames and mandarins
Expiate their egg-shell sins
By reclining on their drumsticks,
Waving fans and burning gum-sticks.
Land of poppy and pekoe!
Could thy sacred artists know--
Could they distantly conjecture
How we use their architecture,
Ousting the indignant Joss
For a pampered Flirt or Floss,
Poodle, Blenheim, Skye, Maltese,
Lapped in purple and proud ease--
They might read their god's reproof
Here on blister'd wall and roof;
Scaling lacquer, dinted bells,
Floor befoul'd of weed and shells,
Where, as erst the tabid Curse
Brooded over Pelops' hearse,
Squats the sea-cow, keeping house,
Sibylline, gelatinous.

Where is Carlo? Tell, O tell,
Echo, from this fluted shell,
In whose concave ear the tides
Murmur what the main confides
Of his compass'd treacheries!
What of Carlo? Did the breeze
Madden to a gale while he,
Curl'd and cushion'd cosily,
Mixed in dreams its angry breathings
With the tinkle of the tea-things
In his mistress' cabin laid?
--Nor dyspeptic, nor dismay'd,
Drowning in a gentle snore
All the menace of the shore
Thunder'd from the surf a-lee.
Near and nearer horribly,--
Scamper of affrighted feet,
Voices cursing sail and sheet,
While the tall ship shook in irons--
All the peril that environs
Vessels 'twixt the wind and rock
Clawing--driving? Did the shock,
As the sunk reef split her back,
First arouse him? Did the crack
Widen swiftly and deposit
Him in homeless night?

Or was it,
Not when wave or wind assail'd,
But in waters dumb and veil'd,
That a looming shape uprist
Sudden from the Channel mist,
And with crashing, rending bows
Woke him, in his padded house,
To a world of alter'd features?
Were these panic-ridden creatures
They who, but an hour agone,
Ran with biscuit, ran with bone,
Ran with meats in lordly dishes,
To