Poems (Hoffman)/The Granite Boulder of the Beach

by Martha Lavinia Hoffman

THE GRANITE BOULDER OF THE BEACH.

Who could be sterner, colder,
Who could be grander, older,
Than I, the granite boulder,
 Monarch of beach and shore;
Colder than human coldness,
Older than human oldness,
Bolder than human boldness,
 Who was my peer before?

Born in an age chaotic,
Born to a throne despotic,
Breaker and rare exotic
 Tremble beneath my frown;
Resting from Nature's revel
Back in an age primeval
Who shall my grandeur level?
 Older than king or crown.

Brief are the generations,
Boastful and weak the nations
Time's mighty revelations
 'Graved on my armor cold,
Science with eyes far seeing,
Error ofttimes decreeing
Draws from my birth and being
 Fancies and facts untold.

Waves in their aimless revel,
Tossed up the glistening gravel
'Till a beach firm and level
 Lies at my broad, gray base;
Here happy children playing,
Here happy lovers straying,
To me their homage paying
 Gaze upward to my face.

O'er my broad brow are bending
Branches, their blooms suspending
Fair, fragile beauty blending
 With grandest symmetry,
While a blue breaker tosses
To me her tangled mosses
Fashioned in wreaths and crosses
 Flowers of the land and sea.

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Steady the sculptor's chisel
Surer than deadly missile
Moves while his careless whistle
 Mockingly floats o'er all,
Dark earth, oh, be my pillow!
Hide me, oh drooping willow!
Chant dirges faithful billow,
 Great is my fall!

Held like a captive quaking,
No strife for freedom making,
Never a fetter breaking,
 Broken, defaced and scarred,
Man, who to earth hath brought me,
Man, who my ruin wrought me,
Man, who with shame hath fraught me,
 Man, who my beauty marred,

Brief are thy generations,
Boastful and weak thy nations,
Transient thy best creations,
 Thy longest life a span;
Owning in all thy science
Mine as a race of giants,
Darest thou our defiance
 Weak, dying, timorous man?
Slain by the storm's caressing,
Choked by the breaker's blessing;
Nature's great laws transgressing,
 Changing and weak and small.
Man of decay partaker,
Only to Nature's Maker;
Ruler of storm and breaker,
 I shall arise to fall.

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Alas! a broken column
Reared in a city solemn,
Thus hath my glory fallen,
 All things are new and strange.
Far from the wild waves' rollic,
 Far from the billows' frolic;
At last to rise symbolic
 Of death, decay and change.