The Dunes

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?

VII.