Overlooking the town of Lynn,

So far above that the city's din

Mingles and blends with the heavy roar

Of the breakers along the curving shore;

Scarred and furrowed and glacier-seamed

Back in the ages so long ago

The boldest philosopher never dreamed

To count the centuries ebb and flow;

Stands a rock with its gray old face

Eastward ever turned, to the place

Where first the rim of the sun is seen,

Whenever the morning sky is bright,

Cleaving the glistening, glancing sheen

Of the sea with a disc of insufferable light.

Down in the earth its roots strike deep;

Up to his breast the houses creep,

Climbing e'en to his rugged face,

Or nesting lovingly at his base.

 

Stand on his forehead, bare and brown;

Send your gaze o'er the roofs of the town

Away to the line, so faint and dim,

Where the sky stoops down to the crystal rim

Of the broad Atlantic, whose billows toss,

Wrestling and wiltering and hurrying on

With awful fury, whenever across

His broad, bright surface with howl and moan,

The tempest whirls, with black wing bowed

To the yielding waters which fly to the cloud,

Or hurry along, with thunderous shocks,

To break on the ragged and riven rocks.

 

When the tide comes in on a sunny day,

You can see the waves break back in spray

From the splintered spurs of Phillips' Head;

Or, tripping along with dainty tread,

As of a million glancing feet,

Shake out the light in a quick retreat;

Or along the smooth curve of the beach,

Snowy and curling, in long lines reach

An islet, anchored and held to land

By a glistening, foam-fringed ribbon of sand-

That is Nahant and that hoary ledge

To the left is Egg Rock, like a blunted wedge

Cleaving the restless ocean's breast,

And bearing the light-house on its crest.