Cliffs with the records of fierce flying fires on them —

Loom over perilous pits of eclipse ;
Alps, with anathema stamped in the spires on them —

Out by the wave with a curse on its lips.
Never is sign of soft, beautiful green on it —

Never the colour, the glory of rose !
Neither the fountain nor river is seen on it,

Naked its crags are, and barren its snows !
Blue as the face of the drowned is the shore of it —

Shore, with the capes of indefinite cave.
Strange is the voice of its wind, and the roar of it

Startles the mountain and hushes the wave.
Out to the south and away to the north of it,

Spectral and sad are the spaces untold !



144 BEYOND KERGUELEN

All the year round a great cry goeth forth of it-
Sob of this leper of lands in the cold.
No man hath stood, all its bleak, bitter years on it —

Fall of a foot on its wastes is unknown :
Only the sound of the hurricane's spears on it

Breaks with the shout from the uttermost zone.
