Classic Poem

CCI.

He revolved in the wheels of the circular gales,
When they lash the deep sea with invisible flails,
And was splashed by the salt foam the ocean with clangor,
Like rockets of water, up-threw in its anger.

CCII.

He found out the hearts of the wide-spreading rains,
In the glens of the mountains, or wood-mantled plains;
He drew the wet curtains around him in glee,
And rode, like a king, in sublime privacy.

CCIII.

He examined the laws which the snow-drifts follow,
As they lie amphitheatre-wise round the hollow,
As if water congealed on the uneven land
Took the patterns the sea-water makes on the sand.

CCIV.

O what beauty there was in the crystallized grains,
Each with its prism, and its deftly joined veins;
And he laughed at the voices of clocks and of bells,
As they quaked through the drift with their querulous swells.

CCV.

There was beauty in fogs, in their white fleecy gloom,
With each nook of earth curtained off like a room,
With the seemingly mist-echoed sounds that up-roll,
As if from another world down in a hole.

CCVI.

He heard the ice yawn in the still winter night,
As if the frost's slumber were broken and light,
And, in spite of his science, was startled at times
By the firs flinging off their light loads of snow-rimes.

CCVII.

Now he spans all at once fifty leagues of a storm,
Till he comes where its outskirts a frontier may form,
Twixt the calm and itself, and he halts and looks through
Silver windows of white mist, and beyond them the blue.

CCVIII.

O see how yon hills fold their green arms and sleep,
Where the cataract faints summer-dried on the steep;
Go, find out the ear of the echo, and there
Rest awhile, and dream well, in the soft tingling air.

CCIX.

Now he rouses tired nature, and bids her awake,
For his beauty-palled spirit hath craved an earthquake;
And he races his thoughts 'gainst the shock, in his mirth,
Thro' the sinuous veins of elastic old earth.

CCX.

He knocks at the hollow of purple midnight,
To see if his knocking will make it strike light,
Or if the jarred planets will vibrate and quiver,
As they seem to do down in the tremulous river.