THE PRECIPICE.
Reading edition
There is a rock whose craggy brow
Hangs beetling o’er the wave below,
Adown whose sheer descent the eye,
When twilight’s gloom is gath’ring nigh,
Will gaze, but vainly, to descry
The sullen waves that wash beneath,
As endless and as dark as death.
You see no tide—you scarcely hear—
You only feel a nameless fear;
The night-bird, sailing slowly by,
Dares not his melancholy cry:
Dares scarcely flap his lazy wing:
Dares not behold this fearful thing—
But far beneath, will upward soar,
To cross the dread abyss no more.
H. J. V.