University of Virginia Library

The hurricanes are fled! the rains,
That plough'd the mountains, wreck'd the plains,
Have pass'd away before the wind,
And left a wilderness behind,
As if an ocean had been there
Exhaled, and left its channels bare.
But, with a new and sudden birth,
Nature replenishes the earth;
Plants, flowers, and shrubs, o'er all the land
So promptly rise, so thickly stand,
As if they heard a voice,—and came,
Each at the calling of its name.
The tree, by tempests stript and rent,
Expands its verdure like a tent,
Beneath whose shade, in weary length,
The' enormous lion rests his strength,
For blood, in dreams of hunting, burns,
Or, chased himself, to fight returns;
Growls in his sleep, a dreary sound,
Grinds his wedged teeth, and spurns the ground;
While monkeys, in grotesque amaze,
Down from their bending perches gaze,
But when he lifts his eye of fire,
Quick to the topmost boughs retire.

Loud o'er the mountains bleat the flocks;
The goat is bounding on the rocks;
Far in the valleys range the herds;
The welkin gleams with flitting birds,
Whose plumes such gorgeous tints adorn,
They seem the offspring of the morn.
From nectar'd flowers and groves of spice,
Earth breathes the air of Paradise;
Her mines their hidden wealth betray,
Treasures of darkness burst to day;
O'er golden sands the rivers glide,
And pearls and amber track the tide.
Of every sensual bliss possess'd,
Man riots here;—but is he bless'd?
And would he choose, for ever bright,
This Summer-day without a night?
For here hath Summer fix'd her throne,
Intent to reign,—and reign alone.

Daily the sun, in his career,
Hotter and higher, climbs the sphere,
Till from the zenith, in his rays,
Without a cloud or shadow, blaze
The realms beneath him:—in his march,
On the blue key-stone of heaven's arch,
He stands;—air, earth, and ocean lie
Within the presence of his eye,
The wheel of Nature seems to rest,
Nor rolls him onward to the west,
Till thrice three days of noon unchanged,
That torrid clime have so deranged,
Nine years may not the wrong repair;
But Summer checks the ravage there;
Yet still enjoins the sun to steer
By the stern Dog-star round the year,
With dire extremes of day and night,
Tartarean gloom, celestial light.

In vain the gaudy season shines,
Her beauty fades, her power declines:
Then first her bosom felt a care;
—No healing breeze embalm'd the air,
No mist the mountain-tops bedew'd,
Nor shower the arid vale renew'd;
The herbage shrunk; the ploughman's toil
Scatter'd to dust the crumbling soil;
Blossoms were shed; the' umbrageous wood,
Laden with sapless foliage, stood;
The streams, impoverish'd day by day,
Lessen'd insensibly away;
Where cattle sought, with piteous moans,
The vanish'd lymph, midst burning stones,
And tufts of wither'd reeds, that fill
The wonted channel of the rill;
Till, stung with hornets, mad with thirst,
In sudden rout, away they burst,
Nor rest, till where some channel deep
Gleams in small pools, whose waters sleep;
There with huge draught and eager eye
Drink for existence,—drink and die!

But direr evils soon arose,
Hopeless, unmitigable woes:
Man proves the shock; through all his veins
The frenzy of the season reigns;
With pride, lust, rage, ambition blind,
He burns in every fire of mind,
Which kindles from insane desire,
Or fellest hatred can inspire;
Reckless whatever ill befall,
He dares to do and suffer all
That heart can think, that arm can deal,
Or out of hell a fury feel.

There stood in that romantic clime,
A mountain awfully sublime;
O'er many a league the basement spread,
It tower'd in many an airy head,
Height over height,—now gay, now wild,
The peak with ice eternal piled;
Pure in mid-heaven, that crystal cone
A diadem of glory shone,
Reflecting, in the night-fall'n sky,
The beams of day's departed eye;
Or holding, ere the dawn begun,
Communion with the' unrisen sun.
The cultured sides were clothed with woods,
Vineyards, and fields; or track'd with floods,
Whose glacier fountains, hid on high,
Sent down their rivers from the sky.
O'er plains, that mark'd its gradual scale,
On sunny slope, in shelter'd vale,
Earth's universal tenant,—He,
Who lives wherever life may be,
Sole, social, fix'd, or free to roam,
Always and every where at home,
Man pitch'd his tents, adorn'd his bowers,
Built temples, palaces, and towers,
And made that Alpine world his own,
—The miniature of every zone,
From brown savannas parch'd below,
To ridges of cerulean snow.

Those high-lands form'd a last retreat
From rabid Summer's fatal heat:
Though not unfelt her fervours there,
Vernal and cool the middle air;
While from the icy pyramid
Streams of unfailing freshness slid,
That long had slaked the thirsty land,
Till avarice, with insatiate hand,
Their currents check'd; in sunless caves,
And rock-bound dells, ingulf'd the waves,
And thence in scanty measures doled,
Or turn'd heaven's bounty into gold.
Ere long the dwellers on the plain
Murmur'd;—their murmurs were in vain;
Petition'd,—but their prayers were spurn'd;
Threaten'd,—defiance was return'd:
Then rang both regions with alarms;
Blood-kindling trumpets blew to arms;
The maddening drum and deafening fife
Marshall'd the elements of strife:
Sternly the mountaineers maintain
Their rights against the' insurgent plain;
The plain's indignant myriads rose
To wrest the mountain from their foes,
Resolved its blessings to enjoy
By dint of valour,—or destroy.

The legions met in war-array;
The mountaineers brook'd no delay;
Aside their missile weapons threw,
From holds impregnable withdrew,
And, rashly brave, with sword and shield,
Rush'd headlong to the open field.
Their foes the' auspicious omen took,
And raised a battle-shout that shook
The champaign;—stanch and keen for blood,
Front threatening front, the columns stood;
But, while like thunder-clouds they frown,
In tropic haste the sun went down;
Night o'er both armies stretch'd her tent,
The star-bespangled firmament,
Whose placid host, revolving slow,
Smile on the' impatient hordes below,
That chafe and fret the hours away,
Curse the dull gloom, and long for day,
Though destined by their own decree
No other day nor night to see.
—That night is past, that day begun;
Swift as he sunk ascends the sun,
And from the red horizon springs
Upward, as borne on eagle wings:
Aslant each army's lengthen'd lines,
O'er shields and helms he proudly shines,
While spears that catch his lightnings keen
Flash them athwart the space between.
Before the battle-shock, when breath
And pulse are still,—awaiting death;
In that cold pause, which seems to be
The prelude to eternity,
When fear, ere yet a blow is dealt,
Betray'd by none, by all is felt;
While, moved beneath their feet, the tomb
Widens her lap to make them room;
—Till, in the onset of the fray,
Fear, feeling, thought, are cast away,
And foaming, raging, mingling foes,
Like billows dash'd in conflict, close,
Charge, strike, repel, wound, struggle, fly,
Gloriously win, unconquer'd die:—
Here, in dread silence, while they stand,
Each with a death-stroke in his hand,
His eye fix'd forward, and his ear
Tingling the signal blast to hear,
The trumpet sounds;—one note,—no more;
The field, the fight, the war is o'er;
An earthquake rent the void between;
A moment show'd, and shut, the scene;
Men, chariots, steeds,—of either host
The flower, the pride, the strength were lost:
A solitude remains;—the dead
Are buried there,—the living fled.

Nor yet the reign of Summer closed;
—At night in their own homes reposed
The fugitives, on either side,
Who 'scaped the death their comrades died;
When, lo! with many a giddy shock
The mountain-cliffs began to rock,
And deep below the hollow ground
Ran a strange mystery of sound,
As if, in chains and torments there,
Spirits were venting their despair.
That sound, those shocks, the sleepers woke;
In trembling consternation, broke
Forth from their dwellings young and old;
—Nothing abroad their eyes behold
But darkness so intensely wrought,
'Twas blindness in themselves they thought.
Anon, aloof, with sudden rays,
Issued so fierce, so broad, a blaze,
That darkness started into light,
And every eye, restored to sight,
Gazed on the glittering crest of snows,
Whence the bright conflagration rose,
Whose flames condensed at once aspire,
—A pillar of celestial fire,
Alone amidst infernal shade,
In glorious majesty display'd:
Beneath, from rifted caverns, broke
Volumes of suffocating smoke,
That roll'd in surges, like a flood;
By the red radiance turn'd to blood;
Morn look'd aghast upon the scene,
Nor could a sunbeam pierce between
The panoply of vapours, spread
Above, around, the mountain's head.

In distant fields, with drought consumed,
Joy swell'd all hearts, all eyes illumed,
When from that peak, through lowering skies,
Thick curling clouds were seen to rise,
And hang o'er all the darken'd plain,
The presage of descending rain.
The' exulting cattle bound along;
The tuneless birds attempt a song;
The swain, amidst his sterile lands,
With outstretch'd arms of rapture stands.
But fraught with plague and curses came
The' insidious progeny of flame;
Ah! then,—for fertilising showers,
The pledge of herbage, fruits, and flowers,—
Words cannot paint, how every eye
(Blood-shot and dim with agony)
Was glazed, as by a palsying spell,
When light sulphureous ashes fell,
Dazzling, and eddying to and fro,
Like wildering sleet or feathery snow:
Strewn with grey pumice Nature lies,
At every motion quick to rise,
Tainting with livid fumes the air;
—Then hope lies down in prone despair,
And man and beast, with misery dumb,
Sullenly brood on woes to come.

The mountain now, like living earth,
Pregnant with some stupendous birth,
Heaved, in the anguish of its throes,
Sheer from its crest the' incumbent snows;
And where of old they chill'd the sky,
Beneath the sun's meridian eye,
Or, purpling in the golden west,
Appear'd his evening throne of rest,
There, black and bottomless and wide,
A cauldron, rent from side to side,
Simmer'd and hiss'd with huge turmoil;
Earth's disembowell'd minerals boil,
And thence in molten torrents rush:
—Water and fire, like sisters, gush
From the same source; the double stream
Meets, battles, and explodes in steam;
Then fire prevails; and broad and deep
Red lava roars from steep to steep;
While rocks unseated, woods upriven,
Are headlong down the current driven;
Columnar flames are wrapt aloof,
In whirlwind forms, to heaven's high roof,
And there, amidst transcendent gloom,
Image the wrath beyond the tomb.

The mountaineers, in wild affright,
Too late for safety, urge their flight;
Women, made childless in the fray;
Women, made mothers yesterday;
The sick, the aged, and the blind;
—None but the dead are left behind.
Painful their journey, toilsome, slow,
Beneath their feet quick embers glow,
And hurtle round in dreadful hail:
Their limbs, their hearts, their senses fail,
While many a victim, by the way,
Buried alive in ashes lay,
Or perish'd by the lightning's stroke,
Before the slower thunder broke.
A few the open field explore:
The throng seek refuge on the shore,
Between two burning rivers hemm'd,
Whose rage nor mounds nor hollows stemm'd;
Driven like a herd of deer, they reach
The lonely, dark, and silent beach,
Where, calm as innocence in sleep,
Expanded lies the' unconscious deep.
Awhile the fugitives respire,
And watch those cataracts of fire
(That bar escape on either hand)
Rush on the ocean from the strand;
Back from the onset rolls the tide,
But instant clouds the conflict hide;
The lavas plunge to gulfs unknown,
And, as they plunge, collapse to stone.

Meanwhile the mad volcano grew
Tenfold more terrible to view;
And thunders, such as shall be hurl'd
At the death-sentence of the world;
And lightnings, such as shall consume
Creation, and creation's tomb,
Nor leave, amidst the' eternal void,
One trembling atom undestroy'd;
Such thunders crash'd, such lightnings glared:
—Another fate those outcasts shared,
When, with one desolating sweep,
An earthquake seemed to' ingulf the deep,
Then threw it back, and from its bed
Hung a whole ocean overhead;
The victims shriek'd beneath the wave,
And in a moment found one grave;
Down to the' abyss the flood return'd—
Alone, unseen, the mountain burn'd.