The Inland Sea

I know a sea within a western land
Where winds of silence blow, and all forlorn
The black waves wash, from lonely morn to morn,
Upon a gale-blown stretch of whitened sand.
No petrels sweep above that somber strand,
No living thing of any creature born,
Save on the hilltops where a sullen band
Of gaunt wolves crouch beneath the lunar horn.

In icy shallows polar lilies grow,
Which sunder to reveal Jurassic clay:
A bullet-head with motion weird and slow
Precedes a bulk which drives the wolves away,
A dark and monstrous lizard-shape that glides
Upon the waters with the inland tides.