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(From Ranolf and Amohia)
IT was a wondrous realm beguiled | |
| Our youth amid its charms to roam; | |
| O’er scenes more fair, serenely wild, | |
| Not often summer’s glory smiled; | |
| When flecks of cloud, transparent, bright— | 5 |
| No alabaster half so white— | |
| Hung lightly in a luminous dome | |
| Of sapphire—seemed to float and sleep | |
| Far in the front of its blue steep; | |
| And almost awful, none the less | 10 |
| For its liquescent loveliness, | |
| Behind them sunk—just o’er the hill— | |
| The deep abyss, profound and still, | |
| The so immediate Infinite, | |
| That yet emerged, the same, it seemed | 15 |
| In hue divine and melting balm, | |
| In many a lake whose crystal calm | |
| Uncrisped, unwrinkled, scarcely gleamed; | |
| Where sky above and lake below | |
| Would like one sphere of azure show, | 20 |
| Save for the circling belt alone, | |
| The softly painted purple zone | |
| Of mountains, bathed where nearer seen | |
| In sunny tints of sober green, | |
| With velvet dark of woods between, | 25 |
| All glossy glooms and shifting sheen; | |
| While here and there some peak of snow | |
| Would o’er their tenderer violet lean. | |
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| And yet within this region, fair | |
| With wealth of waving woods,—these glades | 30 |
| And glens and lustre-smitten shades, | |
| Where trees of tropic beauty rare | |
| With graceful spread and ample swell | |
| Uprose,—and that strange asphodel | |
| On tufts of stiff green bayonet-blades, | 35 |
| Great bunches of white bloom upbore, | |
| Like blocks of sea-washed madrepore, | |
| That steeped the noon in fragrance wide, | |
| Till, by the exceeding sweet opprest, | |
| The stately tree-fern leaned aside | 40 |
| For languor, with its starry crown | |
| Of radiating fretted fans, | |
| And proudly springing beauteous crest | |
| Of shoots all brown with glistening down, | |
| Curved like the lyre-bird’s tail half spread, | 45 |
| Or necks opposed of wrangling swans, | |
| Red bill to bill, black breast to breast,— | |
| Ay! in this realm of seeming rest, | |
| What sights you met and sounds of dread! | |
| Calcareous caldrons, deep and large | 50 |
| With geysers hissing to their marge; | |
| Sulphureous fumes that spout and blow; | |
| Columns and cones of boiling snow; | |
| And sable lazy-bubbling pools | |
| Of sputtering mud that never cools; | 55 |
| With jets of steam through narrow vents | |
| Uproaring, maddening to the sky, | |
| Like cannon-mouths that shoot on high, | |
| In unremitting loud discharge, | |
| Their inexhaustible contents; | 60 |
| While oft beneath the trembling ground | |
| Rumbles a drear persistent sound | |
| Like ponderous engines infinite, working | |
| At some tremendous task below! | |
| Such are the signs and symptoms—lurking | 65 |
| Or launching forth in dread display— | |
| Of hidden fires, internal strife, | |
| Amid that leafy, lush array | |
| Of rank luxuriant verdurous life: | |
| Glad haunts above where blissful love | 70 |
| Might revel, rove, enraptured dwell; | |
| But through them pierce such tokens fierce | |
| Of rage beneath and frenzies fell; | |
| As if, to quench and stifle it, | |
| Green Paradise were flung o’er Hell,— | 75 |
| Flung fresh with all her bowers close-knit, | |
| Her dewy vales and dimpled streams; | |
| Yet could not so its fury quell | |
| But that the old red realm accurst | |
| Would still recalcitrate, rebel, | 80 |
| Still struggle upward and outburst | |
| In scalding fumes, sulphureous steams. | |
| It struck you as you paused to trace | |
| The sunny scenery’s strange extremes, | |
| As if in some divinest face, | 85 |
| All heavenly smiles, divinest grace, | |
| Your eye at times discerned, despite | |
| Sweet looks with innocence elate, | |
| Some wan, wild spasm of blank affright, | |
| Or demon scowl of pent-up hate; | 90 |
| Or some convulsive writhe confest, | |
| For all that bloom of beauty bright, | |
| An anguish not to be represt. | |
| You look,—a moment bask in, bless, | |
| Its laughing light of happiness; | 95 |
| But look again,—what startling throes | |
| And fiery pangs of fierce distress | |
| The lovely lineaments disclose,— | |
| How o’er the fascinating features flit | |
| The genuine passions of the nether pit! | 100 |
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