By Robert Frost (1928)
The shattered water made a misty din.
Great waves looked over others coming in,
And thought of doing something to the shore
That water never did to land before.
The clouds were low and hairy in the skies,
Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.
You could not tell, and yet it looked as if
The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff,
The cliff in being backed by continent;
It looked as if a night of dark intent
Was coming, and not only a night, an age.
Someone had better be prepared for rage.
There would be more than ocean-water broken
Before God’s last Put out the Light was spoken.
Analysis
Frost compresses apocalyptic dread into a taut sonnet: waves “looked over” others like ranks of an advancing army. The final allusion to “Put out the Light” nods to Othello while sounding a cosmic curfew.
The poem’s meticulous couplets and quickening enjambments make the shoreline feel provisional — spared not by human strength but by geological backing. It’s a modern sublime: cool-eyed, exact, and ominously poised.