Chester Firkins

GAUNT rocks of death that darkly lay,

Unstirred by tide or river’s sway,

Against the glory of the day

The ships of war were still.

Kindred in color to the wave,

Kindred in menace to the grave,

They floated, terrible and brave,

Beneath the peopled hill.

Immovable as forted isles—

Stern guns abristle from their piles—

The anchored squadron marked the miles

From bay to city’s rim.

We gazed upon the steely chain—

The shackles of the mighty main—

Built, by our will, for human pain,

And felt the grandeur grim.

But sudden fell the veil of night,

And sudden to the wondering sight,

From far-thronged wave, and wall and height,

We saw the splendor glow.

Phantasmal as a magic dream,

The bosom of the hidden stream

Burst, beautiful, into the gleam

Of lights, long filed and low.

The floating citadels of death,

As by some mystic shibboleth,

Were fashioned, in the space of breath,

Into a fairy scene.

The things that men had made to kill

Stood glorified and sweet and still,

While music reached the shoreward hill

From out the dream-demesne.

But yet again the dawn came, cold.

The deep guns, by their thunder, told

Their power, where the echoes rolled

Against the rocky shore.

And out upon the ocean grey,

Trim, terrible, in close array,

The dreamful, deathful ships away

Went forth for Peace, or War.