Storm: to the Theme of Polyphemus
Mortal I stand upon the lifeless hills
That jut their craggèd bones against the sky:
I crawl upon their naked ebony,
And toil across the scars of Titan ills
Dealt by the weaponing of gods and devils:
I climb their uppermost deserted levels,
And see how Heaven glowers his one eye
Blood-red and black-browed in the sullen sky,
While all his face is livid as a corpse
And wicked as a snake’s: see how he warps
His sultry beam across the misted sea,
As if he grudged its darkling ministry.
He looks so covetous, I think he hides
—Jetsam of the slow ethereal tides—
Some cursed and battered Sailor of the Spheres:
All night he ravens on him and his peers,
But with the day he straddles monstrously
Across the earth in churlish shepherdry,
A-hungered for his hideous nightly feast.
But storms are gathering in the whitened East:
The day grows darker still, and suddenly
That lone and crafty Prisoner of the Sky
Plunges his murky torch in Heaven’s Eye:
The blinded, screaming tempest trumpets out
His windy agonies: Oh, he will spout
His boiling rains upon the soggy air
And heave great rocking planets: he will tear
And snatch the screeching comets by the hair
To fling them all about him in the sea,
And blast the wretch’s fatal Odyssey!
The great convulsions of the Deity
Rumble in agony across the sky:
His thunders rattle in and out the peaks:
His lightnings jab at every word He speaks:
—At every heavenly curse the cloud is split
And daggered lightnings crackle out of it.
Like a steep shower of snakes the hissing rain
Flickers its tongues upon the muddied plain,
Writhing and twisting on the gutted rocks
That tremble at the heavy thunder-shocks:
Soon from the hub on Heaven’s axel-tree
The frozen hail flies spinning, and the sea
Is lashed beneath me to a howling smoke
As if the frozen fires of hell had woke
And cracked their icy flames in the face of Heaven.
Withered and crouching and scarce breathing even,
And battered as a gnat upon a wall
I cling and gasp—climb to my feet, and fall,
And crawl at last beneath a lidded stone,
Careless if all the earth’s foundations groan
And strain in the heaving of this devilry,
Careless at last whether I live or die.
So the vast Æschylean tragedy
Rolls to its thunderous appointed close:
With final mutterings each actor goes:
And the huge Heavenly tragedian
Tears from his face the massy mask and wan,
And shines resplendent on the shattered stage
As he has done from age to bewildered age,
Giving the lie to all his mimic rage.
Tramp
(The Bath Road, June)
When a brass sun staggers above the sky,
When feet cleave to boots, and the tongue’s dry,
And sharp dust goads the rolling eye,
Come thoughts of wine, and dancing thoughts of girls:
They shiver their white arms, and the head whirls,
And noon light is hid in their dark curls:
Noon feet stumble and head swims.
Out shines the sun, and the thought dims,
And death, for blood, runs in the weak limbs.
To fall on flints in the shade of tall nettles
Gives easy sleep as a bed of rose petals,
And dust drifting from the highway
As light a coverlet as down may.
The myriad feet of many-sized flies
May not open those tired eyes.
The first wind of night
Twitches the coverlet away quite:
The first wind and large first rain
Flickers the dry pulse to life again.
Flickers the lids burning on the eyes:
Come sudden flashes of the slipping skies:
Hunger, oldest visionary,
Hides a devil in a tree,
Hints a glory in the clouds,
Fills the crooked air with crowds
Of ivory sightless demons singing—
Eyes start: straightens back:
Limbs stagger and crack:
But brain flies, brain soars
Up, where the Sky roars
Upon the back of cherubim:
Brain rockets up to Him.
Body gives another twist
To the slack waist-band;
In agony clenches fist
Till the nails bite the hand.
Body floats light as air,
With rain in its sparse hair.
Brain returns, and would tell
The things he has seen well:
Body will not stir his lips:
Mind and Body come to grips.
Deadly each hates the other
As treacherous blood brother.
No sight, no sound shows
How the struggle goes.
I sink at last faint in the wet gutter;
So many words to sing that the tongue cannot utter.