I. 2.
When, with a frown that froze the peopled earth, [Footnote
3]
Thou dartedst thy huge head from high,
Night wav’d her banners o’er
the sky,
And, brooding, gave her shapeless shadows birth.
Rocking on the billowy air,
Ha! what withering phantoms glare!
As blows the blast with many a sudden swell,
At each dead pause, what shrill-ton’d voices
yell!
The sheeted spectre, rising from the tomb,
Points at the murderer’s stab, and
shudders by;
In every grove is felt a heavier gloom,
That veils its genius from the vulgar
eye:
The spirit of the water rides the storm,
And, thro’ the mist, reveals the terrors of
his form.
I. 3.
O’er solid seas, where Winter reigns,
And holds each mountain-wave in chains,
The fur-clad savage, ere he guides his deer [Footnote
4]
By glistering star-light thro’ the
snow,
Breathes softly in her wondering ear
Each potent spell thou bad’st him
know.
By thee inspir’d, on India’s
sands, [Footnote 5]
Full in the sun the Bramin stands;
And, while the panting tigress hies
To quench her fever in the stream,
His spirit laughs in agonies, [Footnote
6]
Smit by the scorchings of the noontide beam.
Mark who mounts the sacred pyre,
Blooming in her bridal vest:
She hurls the torch! she fans the fire!
To die is
to be blest: [Footnote 7]
She clasps her lord to part no more,
And, sighing, sinks! but sinks to soar.
O’ershadowing Scotia’s desert
coast,
The Sisters sail in dusky state, [Footnote
8]
And, wrapt in clouds, in tempests tost,
Weave the airy web of fate;
While the lone shepherd, near
the shipless main, [Footnote 9]
Sees o’er her hills advance the long-drawn funeral
train,
II. 1.
Thou spak’st, and lo! a new creation
glow’d.
Each unhewn
mass of living stone
Was clad
in horrors not its own,
And at its base the trembling nations
bow’d.
Giant Error,
darkly grand,
Grasp’d
the globe with iron hand.
Circled with seats of bliss, the Lord
of Light
Saw prostrate worlds adore his golden
height.
The statue, waking with immortal powers,
[Footnote 10]
Springs from its parent earth, and shakes
the spheres;
The indignant pyramid sublimely towers,
And braves the efforts of a host of years.
Sweet Music breathes her soul into the
wind;
And bright-ey’d Painting stamps the image of
the mind.
II. 2.
Round their rude ark old Egypt’s
sorcerers rise!
A timbrell’d
anthem swells the gale,
And bids
the God of Thunders hail; [Footnote 11]
With lowings loud the captive God replies.
Clouds of
incense woo thy smile,
Scaly monarch
of the Nile! [Footnote 12]
But ah! what myriads claim the bended
knee? [Footnote 13]