Stanzas Composed At Carnac

Far on its rocky knoll descried     Saint Michaels chapel cuts the sky.     I climbd; beneath me, bright and wide,     Lay the lone coast of Brittany.     Bright in the sunset, weird and still,     It lay beside the Atlantic wave,     As if the wizard Merlins will     Yet charmd it from his forest grave.     Behind me on their grassy sweep,     Bearded with lichen, scrawld and grey,     The giant stones of Carnac sleep,     In the mild evening of the May.     No priestly stern procession now     Streams through their rows of pillars old;     No victims bleed, no Druids bow;     Sheep make the furze-grown aisles their fold.     From bush to bush the cuckoo flies,     The orchis red gleams everywhere;     Gold broom with furze in blossom vies,     The blue-bells perfume all the air.     And oer the glistening, lonely land,     Rise up, all round, the Christian spires.     The church of Carnac, by the strand,     Catches the westering suns last fires.     And there across the watery way,     See, low above the tide at flood,     The sickle-sweep of Quiberon bay     Whose beach once ran with loyal blood!     And beyond that, the Atlantic wide!     All round, no soul, no boat, no hail!     But, on the horizons verge descried,     Hangs, touchd with light, one snowy sail!     Ah, where is he, who should have come     Where that far sail is passing now,     Past the Loires mouth, and by the foam     Of Finistres unquiet brow,     Home, round into the English wave?     He tarries where the Rock of Spain     Mediterranean waters lave;     He enters not the Atlantic main.     Oh, could he once have reachd this air     Freshend by plunging tides, by showers!     Have felt this breath he loved, of fair     Cool northern fields, and grass, and flowers!     He longd for it, pressd on! In vain.     At the Straits faild that spirit brave.     The South was parent of his pain,     The South is mistress of his grave.