On the Cliff Walk at Newport, Rhode Island, Thinking of Percy Bysshe Shelley

The house of stone turns its back on town
to govern an Atlantic even sky canít stop.
Big as a museum, it keeps us off the lawn
with chain-link fences camouflaged by rosehips.
Presiding from this height it says Look on
my works, ye Mighty, and despair! I do,
counting forty windows, six French doors,
a dozen chimneys. Gone, the men who
ushered progress here, those individuals,
who breakfasted on the green, debating wars
their women wouldnít understand. Farewell.
The waves still fling their ermine to the land,
refine the rocks colliding in their pulló
a loud applause that steadily makes sand.