THE storm had raved its furious soul away; O'er its wild ruins Twilight, spectral, gray, Stole like a nun, 'midst wounded men and slain, Walking the bounds of some fierce battle-plain. The ghost of thunder muttered faintly by; While down the uttermost spaces of the sky, Just where the sunset's glimmering verge grew pale, The baffled winds outbreathed their dying wail! The sombre clouds that thronged a shadowy west Writhed, as if tortured monsters of unrest, Whose depths the keen sheet-lightnings rent apart, To show what fiery torment throbbed at heart! Where raged of late the war of elements dread, Brooded a solemn silence overhead, Through which, beyond the cloud-strewn, heavenly field, The moon shone gory as a warrior's shield, Dipped in the veins of many a vanquished foe; Blood-red, I marked the wandering vapors flow Vaguely about her, while her lurid light Scared the vague vanguard of the shades of night; Their banded hosts retreating, wild and dim, In shattered cohorts o'er the horizon's rim: Yet, the broad empire of those baleful beams Heaved with strange shapes and hues of nightmare dreams! Here, as from cloud-born Himalayas rolled, I saw what seemed a cataract's rush of gold, Hurled between shores of darkness, dense and dire, Down to a seething mountain-lake of fire; There, dismal catacombs, whose nether glooms Yawned, to reveal their loathsome place of tombs: Caverns of mystic depth, whence bubbling came The blue-tinged horror of sulphureous flame; Fragments of castles, with fresh blood besprent, Gaunt, ruined tower, and blasted battlement -- On which, flame-clad, and tottering to their fall, Dark eyes of frenzy flashed o'er cope and wall! With awful ocean-spaces, limitless, grand, Where spectral billows lashed a viewless land; Their mountainous floods a frowning zenith kissed, But glimpsed, at times, 'twixt folds of phantom-mist, I viewed, as faintly touched by muffled stars, The semblance of dead forms, on shipwrecked spars Whirled upward, and dead faces, a white spume Smote to false life against that turbulent gloom, Where mournful birds, on pinions gray or dun, Circled, methought, o'er some half-perished sun, Whose feeble lustre, faltering upward, flings A sad-hued radiance round their pallid wings; Yea! all fantastic shapes of terror, wrought 'Twixt errant fancy and dream-haunted thought, Until I seemed with Dante's soul to fly, Through new Infernos, shifted to -- the sky! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE PLUMPUPPETS by CHRISTOPHER DARLINGTON MORLEY AGAMEMNON: HELEN. CHORUS by AESCHYLUS INSCRIPTIONS: 2. FOR A STATUE OF CHAUCER AT WOODSTOCK by MARK AKENSIDE UPON THE SAME by DECIMUS MAGNUS AUSONIUS OUT OF THE SILENCE by S. MINERVA BOYCE AUTUMN by DAISIE DELL CHURCHWARD AN EPISTLE: ADDRESSED TO SIR THOMAS HAMNER (2) (VARIANT TEXT) by WILLIAM COLLINS (1721-1759) |