| |
| ALL day, as day is reckoned on the earth, | |
| I ’ve wandered in these dim and awful aisles, | |
| Shut from the blue and breezy dome of heaven, | |
| While thoughts, wild, drear, and shadowy, have swept | |
| Across my awe-struck soul, like spectres o’er | 5 |
| The wizard’s magic glass, or thunder-clouds | |
| O’er the blue waters of the deep. And now | |
| I ’ll sit me down upon yon broken rock | |
| To muse upon the strange and solemn things | |
Of this mysterious realm.
All day my steps | 10 |
| Have been amid the beautiful, the wild, | |
| The gloomy, the terrific. Crystal founts, | |
| Almost invisible in their serene | |
| And pure transparency; high, pillared domes, | |
| With stars and flowers all fretted like the halls | 15 |
| Of Oriental monarchs; rivers dark | |
| And drear and voiceless as Oblivion’s stream, | |
| That flows through Death’s dim vale of silence; gulfs | |
| All fathomless, down which the loosened rock | |
| Plunges until its far-off echoes come | 20 |
| Fainter and fainter like the dying roll | |
| Of thunders in the distance; Stygian pools | |
| Whose agitated waves give back a sound | |
| Hollow and dismal, like the sullen roar | |
| In the volcano’s depths;—these, these have left | 25 |
| Their spell upon me, and their memories | |
| Have passed into my spirit, and are now | |
| Blent with my being till they seem a part | |
Of my own immortality.
God’s hand, | |
| At the creation, hollowed out this vast | 30 |
| Domain of darkness, where no herb nor flower | |
| Ere sprang amid the sands, nor dews, nor rains, | |
| Nor blessed sunbeams fell with freshening power, | |
| Nor gentle breeze its Eden message told | |
| Amid the dreadful gloom. Six thousand years | 35 |
| Swept o’er the earth ere human footprints marked | |
| This subterranean desert. Centuries | |
| Like shadows came and past, and not a sound | |
| Was in this realm, save when at intervals, | |
| In the long lapse of ages, some huge mass | 40 |
| Of overhanging rock fell thundering down, | |
| Its echoes sounding through these corridors | |
| A moment, and then dying in a hush | |
| Of silence, such as brooded o’er the earth | |
| When earth was chaos. The great mastodon, | 45 |
| The dreaded monster of the elder world, | |
| Passed o’er this mighty cavern, and his tread | |
| Bent the old forest oaks like fragile reeds | |
| And made earth tremble; armies in their pride | |
| Perchance have met above it in the shock | 50 |
| Of war, with shout and groan, and clarion blast, | |
| And the hoarse echoes of the thunder gun; | |
| The storm, the whirlwind, and the hurricane | |
| Have roared above it, and the bursting cloud | |
| Sent down its red and crashing thunderbolt; | 55 |
| Earthquakes have trampled o’er it in their wrath, | |
| Rocking earth’s surface as the storm-wind rocks | |
| The old Atlantic;—yet no sound of these | |
| Ere came down to the everlasting depths | |
Of these dark solitudes.
How oft we gaze | 60 |
| With awe or admiration on the new | |
| And unfamiliar, but pass coldly by | |
| The lovelier and the mightier! Wonderful | |
| Is this lone world of darkness and of gloom, | |
| But far more wonderful yon outer world | 65 |
| Lit by the glorious sun. These arches swell | |
| Sublime in lone and dim magnificence, | |
| But how sublimer God’s blue canopy, | |
| Beleaguered with his burning cherubim | |
| Keeping their watch eternal! Beautiful | 70 |
| Are all the thousand snow-white gems that lie | |
| In these mysterious chambers, gleaming out | |
| Amid the melancholy gloom, and wild | |
| These rocky hills and cliffs and gulfs, but far | |
| More beautiful and wild the things that greet | 75 |
| The wanderer in our world of light: the stars | |
| Floating on high like islands of the blest; | |
| The autumn sunsets glowing like the gate | |
| Of far-off Paradise; the gorgeous clouds | |
| On which the glories of the earth and sky | 80 |
| Meet and commingle; earth’s unnumbered flowers | |
| All turning up their gentle eyes to heaven; | |
| The birds, with bright wings glancing in the sun, | |
| Filling the air with rainbow miniatures; | |
| The green old forests surging in the gale; | 85 |
| The everlasting mountains, on whose peaks | |
| The setting sun burns like an altar-flame; | |
| And ocean, like a pure heart rendering back | |
| Heaven’s perfect image, or in his wild wrath | |
| Heaving and tossing like the stormy breast | 90 |
| Of a chained giant in his agony. | |
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