| |
| UNTREMULOUS in the river clear, | |
| Toward the sky’s image, hangs the imaged bridge; | |
| So still the air that I can hear | |
| The slender clarion of the unseen midge; | |
| Out of the stillness, with a gathering creep, | 5 |
| Like rising wind in leaves, which now decreases, | |
| Now lulls, now swells, and all the while increases, | |
| The huddling trample of a drove of sheep | |
| Tilts the loose planks, and then as gradually ceases | |
| In dust on the other side; life’s emblem deep, | 10 |
| A confused noise between two silences, | |
| Finding at last in dust precarious peace. | |
| On the wide marsh the purple-blossomed grasses | |
| Soak up the sunshine; sleeps the brimming tide, | |
| Save when the wedge-shaped wake in silence passes | 15 |
| Of some slow water-rat, whose sinuous glide | |
| Wavers the long green sedge’s shade from side to side; | |
| But up the west, like a rock-shivered surge, | |
| Climbs a great cloud edged with sun-whitened spray; | |
| Huge whirls of foam boil toppling o’er its verge, | 20 |
| And falling still it seems, and yet it climbs alway. | |
| |
| Suddenly all the sky is hid | |
| As with the shutting of a lid, | |
| One by one great drops are falling | |
| Doubtful and slow; | 25 |
| Down the pane they are crookedly crawling, | |
| And the wind breathes low; | |
| Slowly the circles widen on the river, | |
| Widen and mingle, one and all; | |
| Here and there the slenderer flowers shiver, | 30 |
| Struck by an icy rain-drop’s fall. | |
| |
| Now on the hills I hear the thunder mutter, | |
| The wind is gathering in the west; | |
| The upturned leaves first whiten and flutter, | |
| Then droop to a fitful rest; | 35 |
| Up from the stream with sluggish flap | |
| Struggles the gull and floats away; | |
| Nearer and nearer rolls the thunder-clap,— | |
| We shall not see the sun go down to-day: | |
| Now leaps the wind on the sleepy marsh, | 40 |
| And tramples the grass with terrified feet, | |
| The startled river turns leaden and harsh, | |
| You can hear the quick heart of the tempest beat. | |
| |
| Look! look! that livid flash! | |
| And instantly follows the rattling thunder, | 45 |
| As if some cloud-crag, split asunder, | |
| Fell, splintering with a ruinous crash, | |
| On the Earth, which crouches in silence under; | |
| And now a solid gray wall of rain | |
| Shuts off the landscape, mile by mile; | 50 |
| For a breath’s space I see the blue wood again, | |
| And, ere the next heart-beat, the wind-hurled pile, | |
| That seemed but now a league aloof, | |
| Bursts crackling o’er the sun-parched roof; | |
| Against the windows the storm comes dashing, | 55 |
| Through tattered foliage the hail tears crashing, | |
| The blue lightning flashes, | |
| The rapid hail clashes, | |
| The white waves are tumbling, | |
| And, in one baffled roar, | 60 |
| Like the toothless sea mumbling | |
| A rock-bristled shore, | |
| The thunder is rumbling | |
| And crashing and crumbling,— | |
| Will silence return nevermore? | 65 |
| Hush! Still as death, | |
| The tempest holds his breath | |
| As from a sudden will; | |
| The rain stops short, but from the eaves | |
| You see it drop, and hear it from the leaves, | 70 |
| All is so bodingly still; | |
| Again, now, now, again | |
| Plashes the rain in heavy gouts, | |
| The crinkled lightning | |
| Seems ever brightening, | 75 |
| And loud and long | |
| Again the thunder shouts | |
| His battle-song,— | |
| One quivering flash, | |
| One wildering crash, | 80 |
| Followed by silence dead and dull, | |
| As if the cloud, let go, | |
| Leapt bodily below | |
| To whelm the earth in one mad overthrow, | |
| And then a total lull. | 85 |
| |
| Gone, gone, so soon! | |
| No more my half-crazed fancy there | |
| Can shape a giant in the air, | |
| No more I see his streaming hair, | |
| The writhing portent of his form;— | 90 |
| The pale and quiet moon | |
| Makes her calm forehead bare, | |
| And the last fragments of the storm, | |
| Like shattered rigging from a fight at sea, | |
| Silent and few, are drifting over me. | 95 |
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