WITH awful walls, far glooming, that possessed | |
| The passes ’twixt the snow-fed Caspian fountains, | |
| Doolkarnein, the dread lord of East and West, | |
| Shut up the northern nations in their mountains; | |
| And upon platforms where the oak-trees grew, | 5 |
| Trumpets he set, huge beyond dreams of wonder, | |
| Craftily purposed, when his arms withdrew, | |
| To make him thought still housed there, like the thunder; | |
| And it so fell; for when the winds blew right, | |
| They woke their trumpets to their calls of might. | 10 |
| |
| Unseen, but heard, their calls the trumpets blew, | |
| Ringing the granite rocks, their only bearers, | |
| Till the long fear into religion grew, | |
| And nevermore those heights had human darers. | |
| Dreadful Doolkarnein was an earthly god; | 15 |
| His walls but shadowed forth his mightier frowning; | |
| Armies of giants at his bidding trod | |
| From realm to realm, king after king discrowning. | |
| When thunder spoke, or when the earthquake stirred, | |
| Then, muttering in accord, his host was heard. | 20 |
| |
| But when the winters marred the mountain shelves, | |
| And softer changes came with vernal mornings, | |
| Something had touched the trumpets’ lofty selves, | |
| And less and less rang forth their sovereign warnings: | |
| Fewer and feebler; as when silence spreads | 25 |
| In plague-struck tents, where haughty chiefs, left dying, | |
| Fail by degrees upon their angry beds, | |
| Till, one by one, ceases the last stern sighing. | |
| One by one, thus, their breath the trumpets drew, | |
| Till now no more the imperious music blew. | 30 |
| |
| Is he then dead? Can great Doolkarnein die? | |
| Or can his endless hosts elsewhere be needed? | |
| Were the great breaths that blew his minstrelsy | |
| Phantoms, that faded as himself receded? | |
| Or is he angered? Surely he still comes; | 35 |
| This silence ushers the dread visitation; | |
| Sudden will burst the torrent of his drums, | |
| And then will follow bloody desolation. | |
| So did fear dream; though now, with not a sound | |
| To scare good hope, summer had twice crept round. | 40 |
| |
| Then gathered in a band, with lifted eyes, | |
| The neighbors, and those silent heights ascended. | |
| Giant, nor aught blasting their bold emprise, | |
| They met, though twice they halted, breath suspended: | |
| Once, at a coming like a god’s in rage | 45 |
| With thunderous leaps; but ’t was the piled snow, falling: | |
| And once, when in the woods, an oak, for age, | |
| Fell dead, the silence with its groan appalling. | |
| At last they came, where still, in dread array, | |
| As though they still might speak, the trumpets lay. | 50 |
| |
| Unhurt they lay, like caverns above ground, | |
| The rifted rocks, for hands, about them clinging, | |
| Their tubes as straight, their mighty mouths as round | |
| And firm, as when the rocks were first set ringing. | |
| Fresh from their unimaginable mould | 55 |
| They might have seemed, save that the storms had stained them | |
| With a rich rust, that now, with gloomy gold | |
| In the bright sunshine, beauteously engrained them. | |
| Breathless the gazers looked, nigh faint for awe, | |
| Then leaped, then laughed. What was it now they saw? | 60 |
| |
| Myriads of birds. Myriads of birds, that filled | |
| The trumpets all with nests and nestling voices! | |
| The great, huge, stormy music had been stilled | |
| By the soft needs that nursed those small, sweet noises! | |
| O thou Doolkarnein, where is now thy wall? | 65 |
| Where now thy voice divine and all thy forces? | |
| Great was thy cunning, but its wit was small | |
| Compared with Nature’s least and gentlest courses. | |
| Fears and false creeds may fright the realms awhile; | |
| But Heaven and Earth abide their time, and smile. | 70 |
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