How grandly those heavy waves are rolling in upon this long
shingle-beach! Onward they come, with an even deliberate march that
tells of power, out of that lowering sky that broods over the southern
horizon; onward they come, onward! onward!--each following its
precursor in serried ranks, ever coming nearer and nearer, ever looming
larger and larger, like the resistless legions of a great invading
army, sternly proud in its conscious strength; and ever and anon, as
one and another dark billow breaks in a crest of foam, we may fancy we
see the standards and ensigns of the threatening host waving here and
there above the mass.
Still they drive in; and each in turn curls over its green head, and
rushes up the sloping beach in a long-drawn sheet of the purest,
whitest foam. The drifted snow itself is not more purely, spotlessly
white than is that sheet of foaming water. How it seethes and
sparkles! how it boils and bubbles! how it rings and hisses! The wind
sings shrilly out of the driving clouds, now sinking to a moan, now
rising to a roar; but we cannot hear it, for its tones are drowned in
the ceaseless rushing of the mighty waves upon the beach and the rattle
of the recoiling pebbles. Along the curvature of the shore the shrill
hoarse voice runs, becoming softer and mellower as it recedes; while
the echo of the bounding cliffs confines and repeats it, and mingles
it with the succeeding ones, till all are blended on the ear in one
deafening roar.