‘Encroaching on each side’

Babson Farm granite quarry, Halibut Point State Park, in Rockport, on Cape Ann.

User:Chensiyuan photo

“{Cape Ann} is a singular region. If a little orchard plot is seen, here and there, it seems rescued by some chance from being grown over with granite….The granite rises straight behind a house, encroaches on each side, and overhangs the roof, leaving space only for only a sprinkling of grass about the door, for a red shrub or two to wave from a crevice, and a drip of water to flow down among gay weeds.’’

— Harriet Martineau (1802-1876), English writer and sociol0gist

'Tosses up our losses'

Cape Ann

“It tosses up our losses, the torn seine,

The shattered lobster pot, the broken oar

And the gear of foreign dead men. The sea has many voices.’’

Many gods and many voices.’’

From “The Dry Salvages,’’ by T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), the famed Anglo-American poet from a Boston Brahmin family, who had a summer place on Cape Ann, off which the rocks called “The Dry Salvages’’ menaced boats.