Peaked Hill Bars

On the dread bars at Peaked Hill The sullen waves are strangely still; And o’er that eerie sand dune’s crest The winds, beguiling, seem at rest; As the wild flare of Highland Light Goes surging up into the night. What sinister serenity Pervades that graveyard of the sea, Where sand bars, white as bone, submerge Down where the tides intone a dirge For houseless and unhallowed souls - ’Tis Death who broods among the shoals! For hark, it comes, the thunderous gale That makes those dunes and beaches quail, As the wild winds and waves embroil Those shoals until they seem to boil And lift to heaven as loud a din As though the fiends were caged within. No mariners of old e’er sailed More dangerous seas. Charybdis veiled No starker terrors than those blue And greenish shallows hide from view, Where, crouched like tigers on the kill, Lurk the dread bars at Peaked Hill!