University of Virginia Library

IV.

“The realm of Ru—the Earthquake-God!
More awful realm, i' faith, than e'er was trod
By jinn or gnome must Ru's have been!”
Cried Ranolf—“fancy what a scene!—
What bellowing Caverns measureless and dread—
With rents in thunder running overhead!
Far-seen through low-browed arches glimmering red,
A Sea perpetual agitation frets and churns
To foam, that luridly illumined burns!
Then wide and wider yawn the branching rents
That through the black impending granite spread;
And lo! the vast Abyss hurled upward vents
A maddening chaos of all elements—
An infinite ruin of red fire
And flying rocks fire-molten—tumult dire
Of roaring steam and sulphurous blasts and lava seas
And forests of upshooting flame and tower-trunked trees
Of pitchy cloud and sky-hung cinderous canopies—
All the fire-entrails of that cavernous pit
Whirled upwards through one vast volcano-rift!—
'Tis Ru! 'tis Ru! with red wild eyes,
And blazing far-coruscant hair,
And frowns that blacken half their glare,
Outrushing from his burning lair
Into a realm for his disporting fit!—
For see! whene'er the hurricane-drift
Of heaven-outblotting ashes swift
Breaks off, the ensanguined dome of cloud
Seems shattered, frittered to a crowd
Of fragments small of uniform shape and size,
As by some shock that ran at once through all
The shivering Earth and shuddering skies!
See! far and near—see! great and small
His band awakening at his call!
How their volcano-fires appal!
Here, white, intense and awful and half-hid
By upheaved strata, lifted like the lid
Of some enormous, black half-opened tomb
Within whose jaws condensed it glows self-fanned:—
There, shot up silent—sudden—athwart the gloom,
Pillars of ruddy light unmoving stand!
And many a sheaf of vivid flame up-showers,
Crested with scarlet flowers
Of red-hot scoria:—level stripes of gold
Afar in lakes the Lava sleeps,
Or like a swarm of deadly serpents creeps,
Or down the shaking mountain-steeps
Dashes in crimson cataracts uncontrolled:
And peaks and pinnacles and ridges bold
In fluctuation terrible are rolled,
And rise and sink like sea-waves; underground
A deadened roar goes on for ever with a sound
As if a hundred Giants waking would have risen,
But bumped and thumped their heads against the roof
Of their too-cramping subterranean prison!
A world's artillery crashes near—aloof
Reverberating thunders rumble round
The mountain-filled horizon!—But I stay
Your story—let us hear how Maui found
Down to those life-springs his adventurous way!”