 | Marah |  |
157
STORM
1
What is there here of aught experience knows,Or language names? This movement without form
Of hideous power in unproductive throes?
Storm! Is it storm?
2
But like no storm I have ever heard of, seenPortray'd in pictures, read about in books,
Or dream'd in sleep, the interminable scene
Of sameness looks.
158
3
There is no storm-rack visible. There areNo thunders audible. There is no play
Of forkt ethereal fires, no lurid glare,
Nothing but grey!
4
Grey everywhere, grey always! Day and nightFor what seems ages long have ceased to be;
And there is neither darkness nor yet light
On land or sea.
5
Nothing but grey! One part of it is air,Another water, and another earth.
But of all shape and colour these three share
A common dearth.
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6
Some horrible impulse moves the whole grey mass,Wrapp'd in such rain as no resemblance bears
To any other rain that ever was.
For this appears
7
A firmamental flood, that forward speeds;Forward, not downward; and in sheets, not drops;
Whose sweeping surge in a plain course proceeds,
And never stops.
8
There are no clouds, but all is cloudiness.There are no winds, but all the wide grey sky,
Borne on the wide grey rain in mad distress,
Is rushing by.
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9
There are no waves, but all the wide grey OceanJerks up and down with the recurrent thump
Of a monotonous mechanical motion,
In a livid lump.
10
From that mechanical motion comes a groanAs of some mighty engine-beam or screw,
Renew'd each moment with no change of tone.
Mechanical too!
11
Mechanical, and yet with life at leastEnough in it to make its meaningless cry
More maddening than all noise of man, or beast,
Or enginry.
161
12
Nothing, no single sight or sound, is hereEither sublime or beautiful. But all
Has in its dull enormity a drear
Power to appal.
13
Such sameness with such terrible unrest,Such vast yet uneventful agitation,
For days and nights have heaven and earth possess'd
Without cessation!
14
For days and nights, so far as thought can tell,Had day or night survived! But time, like space,
Grown featureless and undefinable,
No periods trace.
162
15
When first I felt the storm's approach, my heartLeapt up and hail'd it, glad of any change
From the cruel calm, and eager to take part
In something strange.
16
The contemplation of repose and joyIn Nature soothes not when the soul is sore;
And to an aching heart a smiling sky
Is a pain the more.
17
And so I hail'd a hoped enfranchisementOf grandeur, when this change began. Vain thought!
Great only in duration and extent,
And grand in naught,
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18
'Tis but a grisly chaos far and wideMonopolized by powers unbeautiful,
Whose dulness, terribly intensified,
Makes terror dull.
19
Dull as the incessant multitudinous strifeOf the social world, that only magnifies
Each meanness of the individual life
To a monstrous size!
20
The python is but an enormous worm:The reptile still a reptile, large or small:
The calm was dreary, drearier is the storm:
And that is all!
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