Sunrise in the South Pacific

“There it is, sir!” he cried,

and pointed in the very eyeball of the dawn.  

For a while, I could see nothing

but the bluish ruins of the morning bank …

Then the sun rose, pierced a gap

in these débris of vapours,

and displayed an inconsiderable islet,

flat as a plate  upon the sea,

and spiked with palms of disproportioned altitude.

-- Robert Louis Stevenson, In the South Seas (1896)