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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=339874" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Scene 3. A Cliff on the Breton Coast, Overhanging the Sea</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Hugo. <br>Down drops the red sun; through the gloaming<br>They burst-raging waves of the sea,<br>Foaming out their own shame-ever foaming<br>Their leprosy up with fierce glee;<br>Flung back from the stone, snowy fountains<br>Of feathery flakes, scarcely flag<br>Where, shock after shock, the green mountains<br>Explode on the iron-grey crag.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The salt spray with ceaseless commotion<br>Leaps round me. I sit on the verge<br>Of the cliff-'twixt the earth and the ocean<br>With feet overhanging the surge.<br>In thy grandeur, oh, sea! we acknowledge,<br>In thy fairness, oh, earth! we confess,<br>Hidden truths that are taught in no college,<br>Hidden songs that no parchments express.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Were they wise in their own generations,<br>Those sages and sagas of old?<br>They have pass'd; o'er their names and their nations<br>Time's billows have silently roll'd;<br>They have pass'd, leaving little to their children,<br>Save histories of a truth far from strict;<br>Or theories more vague and bewildering,<br>Since three out of four contradict.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Lost labour! vain bookworms have sat in<br>The halls of dull pedants who teach<br>Strange tongues, the dead lore of the Latin,<br>The scroll that is god-like and Greek:<br>Have wasted life's springtide in learning<br>Things long ago learnt all in vain;<br>They are slow, very slow, in discerning<br>That book lore and wisdom are twain.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Pale shades of a creed that was mythic,<br>By time or by truth overcome,<br>Your Delphian temples and Pythic<br>Are ruins deserted and dumb;<br>Your Muses are hush'd, and your Graces<br>Are bruised and defaced; and your gods,<br>Enshrin'd and enthron'd in high places<br>No longer, are powerless as clods;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">By forest and streamlet, where glisten'd<br>Fair feet of the Naiads that skimm'd<br>The shallows; where the Oreads listen'd,<br>Rose-lipp'd, amber-hair'd, marble-limb'd,<br>No lithe forms disport in the river,<br>No sweet faces peer through the boughs,<br>Elms and beeches wave silent for ever,<br>Ever silent the bright water flows.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">(Were they duller or wiser than we are,<br>Those heathens of old? Who shall say?<br>Worse or better? Thy wisdom, O 'Thea<br>Glaucopis', was wise in thy day;<br>And the false gods alluring to evil,<br>That sway'd reckless votaries then,<br>Were slain to no purpose; they revel<br>Re-crowned in the hearts of us men.)</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Dead priests of Osiris and Isis,<br>And Apis! that mystical lore,<br>Like a nightmare, conceived in a crisis<br>Of fever, is studied no more;<br>Dead Magian! yon star-troop that spangles<br>The arch of yon firmament vast<br>Looks calm, like a host of white angels,<br>On dry dust of votaries past.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">On seas unexplored can the ship shun<br>Sunk rocks? Can man fathom life's links,<br>Past or future, unsolved by Egyptian<br>Or Theban, unspoken by Sphinx?<br>The riddle remains still unravell'd<br>By students consuming night oil.<br>Oh, earth! we have toil'd, we have travail'd,<br>How long shall we travail and toil?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">How long? The short life that fools reckon<br>So sweet, by how much is it higher<br>Than brute life?-the false gods still beckon,<br>And man, through the dust and the mire,<br>Toils onward, as toils the dull bullock,<br>Unreasoning, brutish, and blind,<br>With Ashtaroth, Mammon, and Moloch<br>In front, and Alecto behind.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The wise one of earth, the Chaldean,<br>Serves folly in wisdom's disguise;<br>And the sensual Epicurean,<br>Though grosser, is hardly less wise;<br>'Twixt the former, half pedant, half pagan,<br>And the latter, half sow and half sloth,<br>We halt, choose Astarte or Dagon,<br>Or sacrifice freely to both.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">With our reason that seeks to disparage,<br>Brute instinct it fails to subdue;<br>With our false illegitimate courage,<br>Our sophistry, vain and untrue;<br>Our hopes that ascend so and fall so,<br>Our passions, fierce hates and hot loves,<br>We are wise (aye, the snake is wise also)<br>Wise as serpents, NOT harmless as doves.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Some flashes, like faint sparks from heaven,<br>Come rarely with rushing of wings;<br>We are conscious at times we have striven,<br>Though seldom, to grasp better things;<br>These pass, leaving hearts that have falter'd,<br>Good angels with faces estranged,<br>And the skin of the Ethiop unalter'd,<br>And the spots of the leopard unchanged.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Oh, earth! pleasant earth! have we hanker'd<br>To gather thy flowers and thy fruits?<br>The roses are wither'd, and canker'd<br>The lilies, and barren the roots<br>Of the fig-tree, the vine, the wild olive,<br>Sharp thorns and sad thistles that yield<br>Fierce harvest-so WE live, and SO live<br>The perishing beasts of the field.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And withal we are conscious of evil<br>And good-of the spirit and the clod,<br>Of the power in our hearts of a devil,<br>Of the power in our souls of a God,<br>Whose commandments are graven in no cypher,<br>But clear as His sun-from our youth<br>One at least we have cherished-'An eye for<br>An eye, and a tooth for a tooth.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Oh, man! of thy Maker the image;<br>To passion, to pride, or to wealth,<br>Sworn bondsman, from dull youth to dim age,<br>Thy portion the fire or the filth,<br>Dross seeking, dead pleasure's death rattle<br>Thy memories' happiest song,<br>And thy highest hope-scarce a drawn battle<br>With dark desperation. How long?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Roar louder! leap higher! ye surf-beds,<br>And sprinkle your foam on the furze;<br>Bring the dreams that brought sleep to our turf-beds,<br>To camps of our long ago years,<br>With the flashing and sparkling of broadswords,<br>With the tossing of banners and spears,<br>With the trampling of hard hoofs on hard swards,<br>With the mingling of trumpets and cheers.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The gale has gone down; yet outlasting<br>The gale, raging waves of the sea,<br>Casting up their own foam, ever casting<br>Their leprosy up with wild glee,<br>Still storm; so in rashness and rudeness<br>Man storms through the days of his grace;<br>Yet man cannot fathom God's goodness,<br>Exceeding God's infinite space.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And coldly and calmly and purely<br>Grey rock and green hillock lie white<br>In star-shine dream-laden-so surely<br>Night cometh-so cometh the night<br>When we, too, at peace with our neighbour,<br>May sleep where God's hillocks are piled,<br>Thanking HIM for a rest from day's labour,<br>And a sleep like the sleep of a child!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Adam+Lindsay+Gordon">Adam Lindsay Gordon</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=339874" data-title="Scene 3. A Cliff on the Breton Coast, Overhanging the Sea de Adam Lindsay Gordon" data-description="Hugo. 
Down drops the red sun; through the gloaming
They burst-raging waves of the sea,
Foaming out their own shame-ever foaming
Their leprosy up with fierce glee;
Flung back from the stone, snowy fountains
Of feathery flakes, scarcely flag
Where,..."></div>
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