Page:A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields.djvu/292

The tail in a circle concealed under the form,
The eyes wide dilated, the feet febrile, they stood,
Or crouched down as they howled in that drear solitude,
While o'er them a shudder swept at times like a storm.

The sea-foam, in showers, glued to their spines and their hips
Long tangles, and made salient the vertebrae bare,
And when the waves to attack them bounded in air
Their white teeth gnashed under their red slavering lips.

In the gleams faint and ghastly of the moon on her range,
What an anguish unknown by the billows dim-seen,
Made a soul shriek and lament in your figures unclean?
Why howled you thus, spectres, frighted, frightful and strange?

I know not; but, O dogs that howled wild on the shore!
Though suns after suns, in the seas, since have been cast,
I hear still resounding from the depths of my past
Your cry of despair, and it shall ring evermore.