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(From Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage)
THE ROAR of waters!—from the headlong height | |
| Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice: | |
| The fall of waters! rapid as the light | |
| The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss: | |
| The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss, | 5 |
| And boil in endless torture; while the sweat | |
| Of their great agony, wrung out from this | |
| Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet | |
| That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set. | |
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| And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again | 10 |
| Returns in an unceasing shower, which round, | |
| With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain, | |
| Is an eternal April to the ground, | |
| Making it all one emerald. How profound | |
| The gulf! and how the giant element | 15 |
| From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound, | |
| Crushing the cliffs, which downward, worn and rent | |
| With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful vent | |
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| To the broad column which rolls on, and shows | |
| More like the fountain of an infant sea | 20 |
| Torn from the womb of mountains by the throes | |
| Of a new world, than only thus to be | |
| Parent of rivers, which flow gushingly, | |
| With many windings through the vale;—look back! | |
| Lo! where it comes like an eternity, | 25 |
| As if to sweep down all things in its track, | |
| Charming the eye with dread,—a matchless cataract, | |
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| Horribly beautiful! but on the verge, | |
| From side to side, beneath the glittering morn, | |
| An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge, | 30 |
| Like Hope upon a death-bed, and, unworn | |
| Its steady dyes, while all around is torn | |
| By the distracted waters, bears serene | |
| Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn: | |
| Resembling, mid the torture of the scene, | 35 |
| Love watching Madness with unalterable mien. | |
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