Classic Poem

Rosa! thy battlement of beaming ice
Burns, like the battlement of Paradise!
One block of long white light unsulliable
Glows in deep azure, Heaven's cathedral wall,
Gleams, a pure loveliness of angel thought,
With Heaven's inviolable ardour fraught.
A myriad flowers play fearless at thy feet,
And many a flying fairy sips their sweet,
While with the Sun of souls, the Paraclete,
Thou communest up yonder, rapt from earth,
Robed in the evening-gold, or morning-mirth.
One cloudy surge from thy tremendous steep
Recoils, and hangs a warder o'er thy sleep,
Whose awful spirit in deep reverie
Above the world abides eternally:
While seraphs roam around thy silver slope,
Nestle in thy hollows, and with fair-flying hope
Temper the intolerable severity
Of holiest Purpose; many a floweret blows
In the unearthly Honour of thy snows,
Like innocent loves in souls erect, sublime,
Who breathe above the tainted air of time:
While many a falling water kisses
Tinkling emerald abysses
Of shadowy cavern with cool rain,
Clear gliding rills in polished porcelain
Channels descending o'er a crystal plain
From the Frost-Spirit's palace bowers
Of sea green pinnacles, and toppling towers,
And grim white bastion defiled
With rocky ruin of the wild:
While over all thy luminous pure ice
Rears the stupendous radiant precipice,
High terraces the seraphim have trod,
Stairs dwindling fainter, as they near the abode,
Where in light unimaginable dwells God.

But now around thee sullen, murmuring Storm
Flings his dark mantle; such around the form
Of awful Samuel, summoned from the tomb,
At Endor rose: then all is rayless gloom
About thy Presence for a little while;
Until God draws in His cathedral aisle
The folding shroud from thy dread countenance.
Behold! above the storm, as in a trance,
Thy grand, pale Face abides, regarding us,
As from Death's realm afar, like risen Lazarus!

Isled in dusk blue; one star thrills faintly shining
Over thy crest in mournful day's declining:
Far away glens deep solitary blanch
With snow fresh fallen of the avalanche:
Forested prowls the haggard wolf, the craven,
While o'er me croaking weirdly wheels the raven;
Yonder in twilight, fretted with fierce fire,
Lower vast vans of hungering lammergeyer!
Dark vassal crags, who guard thine awful throne,
Wearing dim forests for a sounding zone.
Divide to let thy torrent coursers flee
With thunderous embassage to the great Sea.

Behold! on grand long summits bowed
A huge ghost-cataract of cloud!
Niagara motionless, unvoiced,
In dim rapt air portentous poised!
But ruffled plumes of Tempest lower
Where the giant cliffs uptower,
While their impregnable fort frowns
Defiant, and their haughty crowns
Their vapoury veils,
Livid ice-ribs, and wolf-fanged teeth
Threaten implacable with death
Rash mortal who assails!
Beneath them the heart fails.
One rayless wilderness of stone
Upreared, they warn from their bleak throne;
Ruined halls of lonely storms,
Whose are weird dishevelled forms,
Dark as eerie crags that loom,
Brooding haggard in the gloom,
Assuming semblance of rent thunder,
While they wait expectant under.

Lo! one wide ocean of tumultuous sound
Terrific bursts! flooding Heaven's profound,
Shatters the concave! hark! how, one by one,
Each monarch mountain on his far white throne,
Shocked, buffeted by that infernal word,
His own portentous utterance hath roared,
Tearing night, startled with flame-sweep of sword,
And bellowing fierce frantic wrath
Into the steam of that hell-broth
Around: white fires flash swift unfurled
Over dim ruin of a watery world!
Hark! huge war-standards ponderous unrolling
Over wild surges of tempestuous blast!
While storm-stifled bells are tolling
For souls of pilgrims who have passed
Home at last!
But here amid earthquaking shocks,
Whirlwinds rave around the rocks:
Great pines, agonising horrent
O'er the white terror of the torrent,
In wild lightning-fits leap out
From death's womb, a ghostly rout,
And all wild demon-chariots roll,
Hurtling, chaotic, blind, reft from control;
Until the elemental rage subsides;
Ebbs the fell fury of ethereal tides;
Atlantic billows of slow sullen sound
Subsiding wander o'er the immeasurable Profound.

. . . . Rosa! the Moon soothes thine unearthly rest,
And Peace pervades the snows upon thy breast!