| C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917. | | | | Tempests |
| | | | The southern wind |
| Doth play the trumpet to his purposes, |
| And, by his hollow whistling in the leaves, |
| Foretells a tempest and a blustering day. |
Shakespeare. | 1 |
| | The sky |
| Is overcast, and musters muttering thunder, |
| In clouds that seem approaching fast, and show |
| In forked flashes a commanding tempest. |
Byron. | 2 |
| | Suddeine they see from midst of all the maine |
| The surging waters like a mountaine rise, |
| And the great sea, puft up with proud disdaine, |
| To swell above the measure of his guise, |
| As threatning to devoure all that his powre despise. |
Spenser. | 3 |
| | From cloud to cloud the rending lightnings rage; |
| Till, in the furious elemental war |
| Dissolv’d, the whole precipitated mass |
| Unbroken floods and solid torrents pour. |
Thomson. | 4 |
| | I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds |
| Have riv’d the knotty oaks; and I have seen |
| The ambitious ocean swell, and rage, and foam, |
| To be exalted with the threat’ning clouds, |
| But never till to-night, never till now, |
| Did I go through tempest dropping fire. |
Shakespeare. | 5 |
| | An horrid stillness first invades the ear, |
| And in that silence we the tempest fear. |
Dryden. | 6 |
| | Who shall face |
| The blast that wakes the fury of the sea? |
| * * * * * |
| The vast hulks |
| Are whirled like chaff upon the waves; the sails |
| Fly, rent like webs of gossamer; the masts |
| Are snapped asunder. |
William Cullen Bryant. | 7 |
| | Along the woods, along the moorish fens, |
| Sighs the sad genius of the coming storm; |
| And up among the loose disjointed cliffs, |
| And fractured mountains wild, the brawling brook |
| And cave, presageful, send a hollow moan, |
| Resounding long in listening fancy’s ear. |
Thomson. | 8 |
| | Meanwhile |
| The sun, in his setting, sent up the last smile |
| Of his power, to baffle the storm. And, behold! |
| O’er the mountains embattled, his armies, all gold, |
| Rose and rested: while far up the dim airy crags, |
| Its artillery silenced, its banners in rags, |
| The rear of the tempest its sullen retreat |
| Drew off slowly, receding in silence, to meet |
| The powers of the night, which, now gathering afar, |
| Had already sent forward one bright, single star. |
Owen Meredith. | 9 |
| | Look, from the turbid south |
| What floods of flame in red diffusion burst, |
| Frequent and furious, darted thro’ the dark |
| And broken ridges of a thousand clouds, |
| Pil’d hill on hill; and hark, the thunder rous’d, |
| Groans in long roarings through the distant gloom. |
Mallet. | 10 |
| | Blow, wind, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! |
| You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout |
| Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks! |
| You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, |
| Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, |
| Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, |
| Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ the world! |
| Crack nature’s moulds, all germens spill at once, |
| That make ungrateful man. |
Shakespeare. | 11 |
| | There is war in the skies! |
| Lo! the black-winged legions of tempest arise |
| O’er those sharp splinter’d rocks that are gleaming below |
| In the soft light, so fair and so fatal, as though |
| Some seraph burn’d through them, the thunderbolt searching |
| Which the black cloud unbosom’d just now. |
Owen Meredith. | 12 |
| | A boding silence reigns, |
| Dread through the dun expanse; save the dull sound |
| That from the mountain, previous to the storm, |
| Rolls o’er the muttering earth, disturbs the flood, |
| And shakes the forest leaf without a breath. |
| Prone, to the lowest vale, aerial tribes |
| Descend: the tempest-loving raven scarce |
| Dares wing the dubious dusk. In awful gaze |
| The cattle stand, and on the scowling heavens |
| Cast a deploring eye; by man forsook, |
| Who to the crowded cottage hies him fast, |
| Or seeks the shelter of the downward cave. |
Thomson. | 13 |
| | And sometimes too a burst of rain, |
| Swept from the black horizon, broad, descends |
| In one continuous flood. Still over head |
| The mingling tempest weaves its gloom, and still |
| The deluge deepens; till the fields around |
| Lie sunk, and flatted, in the sordid wave. |
| Sudden the ditches swell; the meadows swim. |
| Red, from the hills, innumerable streams |
| Tumultuous roar; and high above its banks |
| The river lift; before whose rushing tide, |
| Herds, flocks, and harvests, cottages, and swains, |
| Roll mingled down; all that the winds had spar’d |
| In one wild moment ruined; the big hopes |
| And well-earned treasures of the painful year. |
Thomson. | 14 | | |
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