Classic and Contemporary Poetry
AN OLD INN BY THE SEA, by ODELL SHEPARD Poet's Biography First Line: All night long we had heard the voice of the sea Last Line: He sent this last dark cohort crashing in? Subject(s): Hotels; Sea; Inns; Innskeepers; Motels; Boarding Houses; Ocean | ||||||||
All night long we had heard the voice of the Sea Roaming the corridors. Across the worn and hollow floors There went a ghostly tread incessantly. The walls of our old inn, By windy winters eaten grey and thin Trembled and shook, the wild night long, With resonant, vague, hoarse-throated song, Like a storm-strung violin. All night we heard vast forces throng To onset in the dark, indomitably strong, An army under sable banners flying. And then, above the din Of far wild voices crying And farther, wilder voices dreadfully replying, Slowly, far down the unseen mysterious shore, With fearful sibilance and long unintermittent roar, We heard another, mightier tide begin! Then our hearts shook, there on the worlds' wild rim Fronting eternity and neighbouring the Abyss. Had we not cowered all night from the face of Him, The King of Terrors, from the coil and hiss Of the pale snakes of death Writhing about our very door? Had we not borne his clammy breath Upon our hair Nightlong, and his stealthy footstep on the stair, His vast voice everywhere? Had not each echoing wall and hollow floor, Worn by his winds so grey and spectre-thin, Resounded like the shell of a fragile violin That screams once at its death and never more? Had He not homage of our fear enough before He sent this last dark cohort crashing in? | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...HALL OF OCEAN LIFE by JOHN HOLLANDER JULY FOURTH BY THE OCEAN by ROBINSON JEFFERS BOATS IN A FOG by ROBINSON JEFFERS CONTINENT'S END by ROBINSON JEFFERS |
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