But now, instead of smoke and fire, they saw
Red of the heather in that deep grassy hollow,
And heard, instead of the hissing of the abyss,
The small grey locust, stridulent in the sun.
They came to Clermont. All its dark old streets
Were built of lava. By the Place de Jaude,
O, strangely in their own swift race for truth,
They met the phantom of an earlier fire!
They found the house where Pascal first beheld
The sunlight, through a window in lava-stone;