Hark to the rolling of the sulphurous sea,
Upon its shores its billows beat amain;
In angry tumult, furious to be free,
It rends the cloud with one tremendous strain;
The chasm is closed!—once more!—again in vain!
Again! again! Each time, enraged to yield,
It hurls its threats in throes of Titan pain;
While crouch the cattle 'neath their oak-tree shield
And horses, frantic-eyed, in terror hoof the field.
The screaming birds, low-flying, seek their nests,
The swaying sport of panic and the gale,
The tall trees, trembling, bend their creaking crests;
The ramping engine shrieks upon the rail—
How helpless all things seem! how poor, how frail!
Until the welkin warfare's awful knell
Is voice of all below in piteous wail.
Alas! for him who toils in Erie's swell,
And for the timid soul which loveth life too well!
Still roars the thunder, still the skies are rent
With frenzied flame,—the swift electric chain,
Jerked clanging backward when its charge is spent.
Such overhead; but now upon the plain
There is a lull, a listening for the rain.
The air grows still; she feels 'twill not be long;
Like to a poet when o'er heart and brain
The stern, relentless tyranny of Wrong
In knolling tumult broods.—He knows 'twill break in song
And now at last it comes, crashing and cool
And sweet; well for the earth and what is sowed!
Well for the harvest! See, it fills the pool,
In little streams goes leaping down the road.
And now the winds are joyous, and they goad
Their fallen foe, until he half repeats
His former fury.—One might think it snowed.
And sweep from the roofs like dust from driven streets,
The spirits of the storm, wrapt in their winding-sheets.
COUNTRY BOY'S BOAST.
And hath he not whereof he needs must sing?
And hath he not whereof he well may boast?—
He from whose kin so many a one did spring
To shape the mighty rocks that guard the coast
Of History 'gainst Time, lest all be lost;
And chiefly those who stamped the speaking page,
Who bore the standard of Achievement's host
In Fame's tenth legion, from the earliest age
Till stately Vergil wrote, till Chelsea's Vulcan sage.
Judea's royal, world-renowned bard
Was once a shepherd. How must Bethlehem's hills
Have leaped and grown more lovely as they heard;
Till raging monsters, music-charmed, he kills.
And saves his flock, or with his harping stills
More dire destroyers in his monarch's breast!
And whence did Job arise, that prince whose ills,—
Lost, flocks, lands, family, all that he possessed,—
Wrung the immoral song his virtue to attest?
Let him be proud in later days to roam
In Warwick vales by virtuous Avon's shore,
Through fields of Ayr, around the humble home
Of him, the Cincinnatus of song, or o'er
Ettrick and Tweeddale in their days of yore,
Or with the Seasons' bard on Cheviot green,
With young Chile Harold laugh o'er Loch na Garr,
The Solitary trace through Cumbrian scene,
Or weep on Sussex downs with him of gentle mien.