On The Bay

THIS watery vague how vast! This misty globe, Seen from this center where the ferry plies,-- It plies, but seems to poise in middle air,-- Soft gray below gray heavens, and in the west A rose-gray memory of the sunken sun; And, where gray water touches grayer sky, A band of darker gray pricked out in lights,-- A diamond-twinkling circlet bounding all; And where the statue looms, a quenchless star; And where the lighthouse, a red, pulsing flame; While the great bridge its starry diadem Shows through the gray, itself in grayness lost!