Classic Poem

When the black Storm-King rises in his wrath,
And sweeps o'er earth with devastating path,
Darting his fiery shafts from cloud to cloud,
And in low bass delivering mandates proud,
Ah, then I love to mingle in the scene,
More grandly solemn than its mood serene,
To see the lightning's mad, capricious leap
Cleave the dim mazes of the upper deep,
And hear the thunder rumble loud through heaven
As though celestial hosts had wildly striven,
And their artillery's detonating sound
Had, heaven escaping, filled the void profound.

Mark how the leaves desert the sheltering tree,
And, trembling, fly the danger they foresee.
The sportive swallows quit the airy height
Where late they revelled in the morning light:
In strange gyrations circling madly round,
They barely skim the surface of the ground;
On every side their plaintive twitterings rise
In vain remonstrance to the angry skies, —
Vain, for the Storm-King comes, and to his ear
Are music all the pleading cries of fear.
At his command the waves uprear their heads,
And rivers foam within their channelled beds.
What can he care for puny human woes
At whose command the elements arose!

His sable wings across the heavens are thrown,
From north to south, a wide unbroken zone.
Out from the west his marshalled legions pour,
Like countless sea-waves moving to the shore.
No ray of light along the host appears,
Plays round their heads or glistens on their spears.
Stately and solemn, pitiless and vast,
They sink their presence in the soul at last.

The tempest bursts. The jagged lightning tears
Its way from heaven to earth, and onward bears
Its course. The stricken ether shrinks aghast,
Then sudden closes, with unearthly blast
Of thunder. Then a rattling, rolling roar
Racks the whole air, and rising more and more,
Crash succeeds crash and peal crowds fast on peal,
Until the very skies begin to reel,
And through the wooded hills the awful sound
Re-echoes solemnly; the trembling ground
Hurls it again into the shuddering air.
The storm-stripped trees wave high their branches bare,
Twisted and wrung as in the throes of death,
And thresh the windy chaos underneath.
While the great diapason bellows round
And fills all heaven with mighty crashing sound.

But my rapt soul finds each discordant key
Music divine, a crash of melody,
Mounts on aerial wings through realms of space
And looks the tempest in its awful face,
Guides the swift current of the hurtling blast,
Enthroned on lightning sweeps sublimely past,
And stirs the holy organ-keys of heaven,
Whence deep-toned euphony to earth is given.
For the grand harp — that silent in the soul
Lies when the peaceful zephyrs o'er it roll —
Give forth weird music when the tempest's wing
Sweeps rudely o'er each fluctuating string;
And Nature in her every changeful form
Has sympathy with man; but most the storm
Seems in the soul resembling tones to find,
And fill harmoniously the longing mind.