| |
| THOUGH the dusk has extinguished the green | |
| And the glow of the down-falling silver, | |
| In my heart I prefer this subdued, | |
| Cathedral-like gloom on the water: | |
| When the fancy capriciously wills, | 5 |
| Nor loves to define or distinguish, | |
| As a dream which enchants us with fear; | |
| And scarce throbs the heart unaffrighted. | |
| With a color and voice of its own | |
| I behold this wondrous creature | 10 |
| Move as a living thing, | |
| And joyous with joy Titanic. | |
| Its brothers in sandstone are locked, | |
| Yet from their graves speak to it. | |
| It sings to them as it moves, | 15 |
| And the hills and uplands re-echo. | |
| The sunshine kindles its scales, | |
| And they gleam with opal and sapphire. | |
| It uplifts its tawny mane, | |
| With its undulations of silver, | 20 |
| And tosses through showers of foam, | |
| Its flanks seamed with shadow and sunshine. | |
| Like the life of man is its course, | |
| Born far in some cloudy sierra, | |
| Dimpled and wayward and small, | 25 |
| O’erleaped by the swerving roebuck; | |
| But enlarging with mighty growth, | |
| And wearing wide lakes for its bracelets, | |
| It moves, the king of streams, | |
| As man wears the crown of his manhood. | 30 |
| It shouts to the loving fields, | |
| Which toss to it flowers and perfume; | |
| It eddies and winds round its isles, | |
| And its kisses thrill them with rapture; | |
| Till it fights in its strength and o’ercomes | 35 |
| The rocks which would bar its progress. | |
| The earth hears its cries of rage, | |
| As it tramples them in its rushing, | |
| Leaping, exultant above | |
| And smiting them in derision; | 40 |
| Till at length, its life fulfilled, | |
| Sublime in majestic calmness, | |
| It submits to death, and falls | |
| With a beauty it wins in dying, | |
| Still, wan, prone, till curtains of foam enclose it, | 45 |
| To arise a spirit of mist, | |
| And return to the Heaven it came from. | |
| |
| As deepens the night, all is changed, | |
| And the joy of my dream is extinguished: | |
| I hear but a measureless prayer, | 50 |
| As of multitudes wailing in anguish; | |
| I see but one fluttering plunge, | |
| As if angels were falling from heaven. | |
| Indistinctly, at times, I behold | |
| Cuthullin and Ossian’s old heroes | 55 |
| Look at me with eyes sad with tears, | |
| And a summons to follow their flying, | |
| Absorbed in wild, eerie rout, | |
| Of wind-swept and desolate spectres. | |
| As deepens the night, a clear cry | 60 |
| At times cleaves the boom of the waters; | |
| Comes with it a terrible sense | |
| Of suffering extreme and forever. | |
| The beautiful rainbow is dead, | |
| And gone are the birds which sang through it. | 65 |
| The incense so mounting is now | |
| A stifling, sulphurous vapor. | |
| The abyss is the hell of the lost, | |
| Hopeless falling to fires everlasting. | |
| |
