Classic and Contemporary Poetry
STORM-FRAGMENTS, by PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: The storm had raved its furious soul away Last Line: Through new infernos, shifted to -- the sky! Subject(s): Storms | ||||||||
THE storm had raved its furious soul away; O'er its wild ruins Twilight, spectral, gray, Stole like a nun, 'midst wounded men and slain, Walking the bounds of some fierce battle-plain. The ghost of thunder muttered faintly by; While down the uttermost spaces of the sky, Just where the sunset's glimmering verge grew pale, The baffled winds outbreathed their dying wail! The sombre clouds that thronged a shadowy west Writhed, as if tortured monsters of unrest, Whose depths the keen sheet-lightnings rent apart, To show what fiery torment throbbed at heart! Where raged of late the war of elements dread, Brooded a solemn silence overhead, Through which, beyond the cloud-strewn, heavenly field, The moon shone gory as a warrior's shield, Dipped in the veins of many a vanquished foe; Blood-red, I marked the wandering vapors flow Vaguely about her, while her lurid light Scared the vague vanguard of the shades of night; Their banded hosts retreating, wild and dim, In shattered cohorts o'er the horizon's rim: Yet, the broad empire of those baleful beams Heaved with strange shapes and hues of nightmare dreams! Here, as from cloud-born Himalayas rolled, I saw what seemed a cataract's rush of gold, Hurled between shores of darkness, dense and dire, Down to a seething mountain-lake of fire; There, dismal catacombs, whose nether glooms Yawned, to reveal their loathsome place of tombs: Caverns of mystic depth, whence bubbling came The blue-tinged horror of sulphureous flame; Fragments of castles, with fresh blood besprent, Gaunt, ruined tower, and blasted battlement -- On which, flame-clad, and tottering to their fall, Dark eyes of frenzy flashed o'er cope and wall! With awful ocean-spaces, limitless, grand, Where spectral billows lashed a viewless land; Their mountainous floods a frowning zenith kissed, But glimpsed, at times, 'twixt folds of phantom-mist, I viewed, as faintly touched by muffled stars, The semblance of dead forms, on shipwrecked spars Whirled upward, and dead faces, a white spume Smote to false life against that turbulent gloom, Where mournful birds, on pinions gray or dun, Circled, methought, o'er some half-perished sun, Whose feeble lustre, faltering upward, flings A sad-hued radiance round their pallid wings; Yea! all fantastic shapes of terror, wrought 'Twixt errant fancy and dream-haunted thought, Until I seemed with Dante's soul to fly, Through new Infernos, shifted to -- the sky! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...STORM AT HOPTIME by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN THERE IS A SOLEMN WIND TONIGHT by KATHERINE MANSFIELD DEWEY AND DANCER by JOSEPHINE MILES MICHAEL IS AFRAID OF THE STORM by GWENDOLYN BROOKS BREACHING THE ROCK by MADELINE DEFREES THE CLOUDS ABOVE THE OCEAN by STEPHEN DOBYNS OF POLITICS, & ART by NORMAN DUBIE TREMENDOUS WIND AND RAIN by ANSELM HOLLO A STORM IN THE DISTANCE (AMONG THE GEORGIAN HILLS) by PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE |
|