Sacred Meditations and Moral Themes In Verse :: :: University of Virginia Library

But, lo! the heavens are ominously black
Methinks, as though they frowned a dark response.
Erewhile, and star-troops in their island glow
Around the wan enchantress of the skies
Appeared, while lovingly the azure lay
Between them, softer than the lid of sleep.
But now, all pregnant with portentous ire,
The clouds have muffled up the pomp of night.—
There is a gasping in the heated air,
A wing-like flutter in the tim'rous boughs,
And sigh, and sound, from out the heart of things
Invisible, breathed forth; the Storm awakes!
And tones of thunder thrill the heart of earth;
The lightnings cleave the clouds, and north to south,
And east to west, a tale of darkness tell!—
Hark, as the wearied echoes howl themselves
Away, the clamours of the midnight Sea,
Beneath yon cliff, terrifically rise,—
For she is waved with glory! billows heave
Their blackness in the wind, and, bounding on

In vaulting madness, beat the rocky shore
Incessant, flaking it with plumy foam.
I love this passion of the Elements,
This mimicry of chaos, in their might
Of storm! And here, in my lone awfulness,
While every cloud a thunder-groan repeats,
Earth throbs, and nature in convulsion reels,
Farewell to England! Into other climes
I wing my flight,—but on her leave the spell
I weave for nations, till her doom arrive.
And come it shall! When on this guardian cliff
Again I stand, the whirlwind and the wrath
Of desolation will have swept her throne
Away! A darkness, as of old, will reign,
The woods be standing where her cities tower,
And Ocean wailing for his desert Isle!