Billows

East, West and squally South-west, with a roar, / swoop down on Ocean, and the surf and sand / mix in dark eddies, and the watery floor / heave from its depths, and roll huge billows to the shore. / Then come the creak of cables and the cries / of seamen.

The shattered oars start forth; / round swings the prow, and lets the waters sweep / the broadside. Onward comes a mountain heap / of billows, gaunt, abrupt.

"Beware... / Yet first 'twere best these billows to allay. / Far other coin hereafter ye shall pay / for crimes like these."

In a far retreat / there lies a haven; towards the deep doth stand / an island, on whose jutting headlands beat / the broken billows, shivered into sleet.

"Thither we sailed, when, rising with the wave, / Orion dashed us on the shoals, the prey / of wanton winds, and mastering billows drave / our vessels on the pathless rocks astray. / We few have floated to your shore."

"Here Scylla, leftward sits Charybdis fell, / who, yawning thrice, her lowest depths laid bare, / sucks the vast billows in her throat's dark hell, / then starward spouts the refluent surge in air."

We furl the sails, and shoreward row amain. / Eastward the harbour arches, scarce descried. / Two jutting rocks, by billows lashed in vain, / stretch out their arms the narrow mouth to hide. / Far back the temple stands, and seems to shun the tide.

Every thing that heard him play, even the billows of the sea, hung their heads, and then lay by.

Two flashes of lightning, following each other very closely, showed in the distance the grey turrets of Wolf's Crag, and, more nearly, the rollowing billows of the ocean, crested suddenly with red and dazzling light.