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(From Man in the Iron Mask)
A DAY of driving sleet, with hail and rain | |
| That hissed and splashed, and sprayed against the walls, | |
| Urged by the eastern wind, that, wolf-like, howled | |
| Along the leaden ledges of the roof, | |
| Or screamed through loopholes of the masonry, | 5 |
| Or hoarsely rumbled in the sooty throats. | |
| (Cimmerian)—of the chimneys of the keep, | |
| Rattling the vexed and rusty vanes about, | |
| That veered and creaked, and creaked and veered again | |
| A most tempestuous whirl (and icy chill), | 10 |
| Where groans and shrieks and sobbing airs and moans | |
| Prevailed, according to the fantasy | |
| That drave the wild and whistling storm along. | |
| The dark foundations of the Bastille walls | |
| Were banked with lengthy, crisp, white, sloping drifts | 15 |
| Of hailstones multitudinous, that lay | |
| Thick as the pebbles on a moonlit beach, | |
| That binds itself a silvern sandal on, | |
| To grace the foot some towering cliff has given, | |
| In queenly form, to subject waves to kiss. | 20 |
| Crowded together close, the starlings crept | |
| For mutual shelter ’neath the leeward wall, | |
| With tiny plumes awry, or else on end, | |
| While ’neath the blind-arch of a Seine-washed bridge | |
| Some wretched outcast from the storm would cower, | 25 |
| With chin on knees, and icy fingers thrust | |
| Deep in his ragged bosom, seeking warmth; | |
| And in the crowded faubourg girls would creep | |
| To bed in wet and windy garret-nooks, | |
| Where drops the rain upon the wretched floor | 30 |
| In sullen plashes, or else fiercely stabs | |
| With icy needles into shivering flesh, | |
| And these in their storm-broken slumbers dream | |
| Of folks that sit with heavy shutters barred, | |
| And thick warm curtains drawn, and fires ablaze, | 35 |
| And children playing round them; where the hours | |
| Glide gayly on, with lighted lamps and song. | |
| This side the dream,—the real was wretchedness, | |
| The skin upon the body crept, each hair | |
| Was stiffened to a spine, and nature’s life | 40 |
| Shrank back within itself, and feigned to die, | |
| As the anemone in ocean depths | |
| Draws in its tender arms, and hides itself | |
| Within itself, till dread or danger ’s past. | |
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