Far as the eye can see, in domes and spires,
Buttress and curve, ruins of shifting sand,--
In whose wild making wind and sea took hand,--
The white dunes stretch. The wind, that never tires,
Striving for strange effects that he admires,
Changes their form from time to time; the land
Forever passive to his mad demand,
And to the sea's, who with the wind conspires.
Here, as on towers of desolate cities, bay
And wire-grass grow, wherein no insect cries,
Only a bird, the swallow of the sea,
That homes in sand. I hear it far away
Crying--or is it some lost soul that flies,
Above the land, ailing unceasingly?