 | The sentence of Kaires and other poems |  |
103
XL. DUNGEON GHYLL FORCE.
A mountain cleft unformed by mortal hand,Whereout the pent-up stream in dizzy leap
Springs down a sunless cavern, dark and deep,
With drizzling cliffs precipitously grand
Hemmed in—a dungeon not unmeetly named,
Whose peat-stained walls dank shrubs are bending o'er,
And shut the blue sky out, as though they claimed
Some tribute from the spray's up-darting shower;
And, like a chancel-arch of rude carved stone,
Across the chasm a self-formed arch is thrown,
Of old, it may be, by some earthquake's shock,
Hewn from the living masses of the rock.
Beneath, amid the waterfall's deep knelling,
From out a quiet pool a brook is ever welling.
| The sentence of Kaires and other poems | |