The Throes Of Creation
Reading edition
Crash and a smother of foam Drowned in a booming roar! That is the way the surge comes home Pounding along the shore. Hiss and a seething tongue Laps at the crumbling sand! That is the way the sea has wrung Room from the grudging land. Rasp of the undertow As its white tongue flays the beach, Flensing the pebbles to and fro Into its treacherous reach. Ever the sob and moan Of the tortured ledges rings Grinding to dust and welding to stone Ever the hammer swings. Never a solid ground Nor a fixed and steadfast place; Shoals new risen and islands drowned Sculpture the landscape’s face. Thus were the corners laid For the continents and the seas; That is the way the world was made Out of such conflicts as these. Up from the ocean’s bed; Into the ocean cast Surging through infinite ages ahead Out of an infinite past.
The Methodist Meeting House at South Truro was known to many old timers as Hog’s Back Church. The following verses were written while it was still standing, though long deserted and neglected. But to those who knew and admired it, as I did, it deserves something more than the simple granite slab that marks its site. For it remains a lasting memory of a former era on old Cape Cod.