 | The poet, the fool and the faeries |  |
146
THE HAIL STORM
Along the hill's huge back,
Above the crouching terror of the plain,
Tempest, imperial, crowned with blazing black,
Trails far the thunderous purple of his train,
Tattered with fringes of the streaming rain.
Above the crouching terror of the plain,
Tempest, imperial, crowned with blazing black,
Trails far the thunderous purple of his train,
Tattered with fringes of the streaming rain.
Vast forces seem at council: genie shapes
And elementals changing, form on form;
Now from the swarm one awful Deev escapes,
And with a lightning gesture lifts its arm,
Shouting a word of storm.
And elementals changing, form on form;
Now from the swarm one awful Deev escapes,
And with a lightning gesture lifts its arm,
Shouting a word of storm.
And all the earth sits cowering: not a sound:
The forest's shoulders shudder, swing and sway:
Then, like some monster thing that quests around,
The Afrit wind leaps on the driven day,
And wrapped in rain and hail rides his resistless way.
The forest's shoulders shudder, swing and sway:
Then, like some monster thing that quests around,
The Afrit wind leaps on the driven day,
And wrapped in rain and hail rides his resistless way.
| The poet, the fool and the faeries | |