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(From The African Desert)
IT comes, the blast of death! that sudden glare | |
| Tinges with purple hues the stagnant air: | |
| Fearful in silence, o’er the heaving strand | |
| Sweeps the wild gale, and licks the curling sand, | |
| While o’er the vast Sahara from afar | 5 |
| Rushes the tempest in his wingéd car: | |
| Swift from their bed the flame-like billows rise | |
| Whirling and surging to the copper skies, | |
| As when Briareus lifts his hundred arms, | |
| Grasps at high heaven, and fills it with alarms; | 10 |
| In eddying chaos madly mixt on high | |
| Gigantic pillars dance along the sky, | |
| Or stalk in awful slowness through the gloom, | |
| Or track the coursers of the dread simoom, | |
| Or clashing in mid air, to ruin hurled, | 15 |
| Fall as the fragments of a shattered world! | |
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| Hushed is the tempest, desolate the plain, | |
| Stilled are the billows of that troubled main; | |
| As if the voice of death had checked the storm, | |
| Each sandy wave retains its sculptured form: | 20 |
| And all is silence, save the distant blast | |
| That howled, and mocked the desert as it passed; | |
| And all is solitude, for where are they, | |
| That o’er Sahara wound their toilsome way? | |
| Ask of the heavens above, that smile serene, | 25 |
| Ask that burnt spot, no more of lovely green, | |
| Ask of the whirlwind in its purple cloud, | |
| The desert is their grave, the sand their shroud. | |
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