Sketches in verse :: :: University of Virginia Library

Far in the dim south-east, a thin white cloud
Drawn out and spreading like a curtain, veils
The untinted morn. And o'er that duskier creek
Fring'd with dun coppice, lo the Thunder seems
To brood incumbent. See he slowly lifts
Above the horizon his red bristling locks,
While many a livid speck of sulphur swells
Around him, as he rears his giant form.
Lo, at the extremity of heaven, he heaps
Cloud upon cloud, like rock high pil'd on rock,
Solid and vast. And now, while overhead
The pale blue sky is streakt with a dense line
Of white, he pauses, as if unresolv'd
Or to roll on his wrath, or to suspend

Awhile, the terrors of his threatening arm.
Yet, as he breathes a suffocating blast
Thro' the still air, we gasp, as where the eye
Of Syroc, fires the sands of Afric's waste.
'Tis noon. And hark! the squally wind comes on,
Rushing amain: I hear it like the sound
Of hostile spirit shouting; as enrag'd
He rises, to confront his surly foe,
Then sinks in leaden slumber. From the north
Again the rude gale whistles, till at length
He slopes his dread artillery west away,
Yet muttering vengeance. Yes! while now the sun,
That pale and flickering had by fits appear'd,
Sinks like a ball of blood, methinks, he growls
Waiting his prey. I see, I see him grasp
The lurid orb, and rend it from heaven's vault,
And quench it, as in everlasting gloom.