| |
| DEEP Hades of the seven Phlegethons! | |
| From thy basaltic pillared walls I gaze, | |
| Through sulphurous clouds that ceaselessly ascend | |
| From fiery maelstroms in red, rushing whirl, | |
| Into thy vast abyss with silent awe. | 5 |
| Eve’s curtains gather round thee like a shroud, | |
| And drape in shadow Mauna Loa’s dome; | |
| The trade-wind o’er the bending forest sweeps, | |
| Cold and mist-laden from the eastern wave; | |
| And as it parts the fire-born clouds below, | 10 |
| The smouldering ruins of a city vast— | |
| A giant Moscow in a sea of flame— | |
| Appear with blackened walls, and dome and spire | |
| Of church and grand cathedral crashing fall; | |
| Turret and tower and monument go down, | 15 |
| As round them lap and whirl the eddying flames, | |
| Like those lost cities which Jehovah’s wrath | |
| O’erwhelmed in sulphury hail and fiery rain, | |
| Till from the ruined plain the smoke went up, | |
| Seething and dense as from a furnace blast. * * * * * | 20 |
| Thou fiery wonder of the untaught mind! | |
| The simple natives of the isles had made | |
| A home in thee for Pele,—fiery power, | |
| Goddess of the volcano’s hot domain; | |
| How like the ancient Greeks, who wove their dreams | 25 |
| Of the ideal in poetic forms, | |
| And robed Cocytus’ son with Pele’s power | |
| Over their burning, weird, infernal river. | |
| No Stygian waves surround thy Hades deep, | |
| No Iris bright descends with golden vase, | 30 |
| To bring the dreaded draught to perjured gods; | |
| Yet thy wild, fiery glare hath lighted up | |
| A scene more brilliant than Greek poet’s dream, | |
| Sublime in moral courage and the faith | |
| That rent asunder superstition’s chains, | 35 |
| And by her incandescent throne of power, | |
| Defied the Goddess Pele in thy depths. | |
| Kapiolani—noblest of her race,— | |
| Kapiolani—type of womankind,— | |
| In high moral heroism born of love, | 40 |
| In past or present and in every clime, | |
| Immortal as the faith which fired her heart, | |
| Her deed sheds lustre on these ocean isles! * * * * * | |
| O’er fire-browned clinkers and through tangled woods, | |
| Up mountain steeps a hundred miles she walked, | 45 |
| Trampling the creeds of ages ’neath her feet, | |
| Braving the wrath of all the mythic gods, | |
| That, like dark incubi on heart and brain, | |
| Had checked the progress of Hawaii’s race, | |
| She sought thy depths to tempt and to defy | 50 |
| The rage, the power of their multiple gods; | |
| While awe-struck thousands on thy lofty rim | |
| Gazed tremblingly beneath in firm belief | |
| That Pele in her wrath would hurl her fires | |
| On one who dared her in her sulphury home. | 55 |
| Her brow all radiantly illumed by hope, | |
| She stood beside thy rushing, liquid tide | |
| Of red-hot lava in its maddest flow, | |
| And as the sulphury vapors, wreathing, rolled | |
| In eddying fire-lit waves round her tall form, | 60 |
| She seemed divine as thus she calmly spoke: | |
| “In His great name who died for men I come, | |
| To prove to my lost race the living God! | |
| And here, O Pele! superstition’s myth! | |
| I do defy thee on thy throne of power! | 65 |
| If thou existest, whelm me ’neath thy waves, | |
| Pour on me all thy scorching lava flood, | |
| Or suffocate me with thy sulphury breath, | |
| Or close around me all thy lakes of fire! | |
| But no,—the fresh breeze lifts the sulphury clouds, | 70 |
| The waves subside, the fiery jets decrease; | |
| God calms thy vortex as the restless sea; | |
| I trample here on thy pretended power, | |
| And cry, Io Jehova! in thy depths; | |
| Io Jehova! let the triumph ring, | 75 |
| Till all the isles shall know the living God!” | |
| She passed majestic o’er the lava vale, | |
| As a triumphant smile illumed her face, | |
| God-like and noble, born of faith and hope. | |
| Now sable night hangs o’er thee, Kilauea, | 80 |
| But night illumined by thy sulphury glare; | |
| Thy seven seething lakes light up the clouds | |
| With an unearthly and demoniac glow, | |
| The fever flush from thy hot heart of flame, | |
| The hectic glow of an expiring world. * * * * * | 85 |
| Now the waves flash, and, eddying, whirl and leap | |
| ’Gainst crumbling shores of glass-like lava cliffs, | |
| Where Pele’s fair hair waves in sulphury steam; | |
| The fiery jets, fierce bubbling, chase each other, | |
| Like flame-maned coursers on their burning track, | 90 |
| Then disappear, lost in the raging gulf; | |
| Ever with northward flow the current sweeps, | |
| Crackling and sparkling in red fissures deep, | |
| As the cooled surface breaks, like fields of ice, | |
| And dark-red lava heaps in fiery drift. * * * * * | 95 |
| Thou seemest not of earth; thy red waves come, | |
| Up,—rushing from that central, fiery sea, | |
| Beneath earth’s ocean that resistless wars | |
| With all that forms this planet’s fragile crust. | |
| And as I gaze upon thy deep abyss, | 100 |
| Thoughts of the grandeur of Eternal Power | |
| Sweep o’er the mind in wild magnificence, | |
| To far past ages, when Creative Will | |
| Flashed through this planet’s incandescent mass | |
| Ere the earth’s crust was cooled, or the vast sea, | 105 |
| Condensing, fell from seething atmosphere, | |
| On lava beds just cooling round the poles. | |
| Around me are God’s forges, in the domes | |
| Of mountains vast that pierce the blue of heaven, | |
| And from their snowy diadems look down | 110 |
| On plains of lava blackening to the sea, | |
| And in the line of lessening cones that sweep | |
| From thy weird chasm by pit-craters deep; | |
| Here in Time’s morn, red columns flamed from ocean, | |
| Hurled boiling back the hot and vapory waves, | 115 |
| With blazing cataracts of liquid fire, | |
| Till this great isle arose, a smoking mass | |
| Of fire-scorched cinders, as the giant tread | |
| Of the mad earthquake stamped it into form! * * * * * | |
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