Hark, 'tis the sea! How leonine its roar!

But, oh, how more the lion on a height,

As there he glares and listens for the night,

Having devoured day's clouds from shore to shore!

Now grows his mane of billows, high and hoar.

What scents he? Potencies escaping sight,

Till, like the cold, they icily alight

Upon a land where all was spring before.

The sun darts under earth and east again,

What sees he? First the lion at earth's brink

With head down to the stream of stars to drink;

And then, arising to his zenith ken,

Sees that which makes his high, warm spirit sink—

The blight to spring, blown here from England's fen.