Classic Poem

1.

While to the she-wolf from afar
Her prowling mate replied,
And muffled moon, and riddled star,
Glimps'd on the dusk lake's mirror wide;
Asleep, and dreaming, Etheline
Rock'd on her bosom Telmarine,
At lonest Waterside.
Spirit of all that lives to die!
Relate her dream of agony.
She thought, a shape of darkness bow'd
Heav'n's concave, crushing in her breath,
As with the weight of cloud on cloud
To rock-like substance press'd;
And two pale arms snatch'd from her breast
Her nursling, while it slept.
She gasp'd, she wept;
But grief was deafen'd in her soul
By thunders, which then o'er her roll'd,
And would, she thought, for ever roll
Beneath the grave of death,
When suns in death were cold.
Then, did a realm of frost,
A cloud-hom'd desert without shore,
Receive her; and for ever lost,
With tears for light, her only light,
Stone-still, she stood before
Featureless Night.
No sound was there, no flutter'd wing,
No leaf, no form, no living thing,
No beating heart, but hers — no air;
But cold that pierc'd the soul was there,
And horror which no tongue can tell,
And silence insupportable:
'Twas depth unplumb'd, 'twas gloom untrod,
'Twas shuddering thought alone with God.