Gazing from each low bulwark of this bridge, How wonderful the contrast! Dark as night, Here, amid cliffs and woods, with headlong might, The black stream whirls, through ferns and drooping sedge, 'Neath twisted roots moss-brown, and weedy ledge, Gushing. Aloft, from yonder birch-clad height, Leaps into air a cataract, snow-white; Falling to gulfs obscure. The mountain ridge, Like a gray Warder, guardian of the scene, Above the cloven gorge gloomily towers. O'er the dim woods a gathering tempest lowers; Save where athwart the moist leaves' lucid green A sunbeam, glancing through disparted showers, Sparkles along the rill with diamond sheen! A sun-burst on the bay! Turn and behold! The restless waves, resplendent in their glory, Sweep glittering past yon purpled promontory, Bright as Apollo's breastplate. Bathed in gold, Yon bastioned islet gleams. Thin mists are rolled, Translucent, through each glen. A mantle hoary Veils those peaked hills, shapely as e'er in story Delphic, or Alpine, or Vesuvian old, Minstrels have sung. From rock and headland proud The wild wood spreads its arms around the bay: The manifold mountain cones, now dark, now bright, Now seen, now lost, alternate from rich light To spectral shade; and each dissolving cloud Reveals new mountains as it floats away. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...YOUNG LINCOLN by EDWIN MARKHAM AN ANATOMY OF THE WORLD: THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY by JOHN DONNE SATIRES OF CIRCUMSTANCE: 1. AT TEA by THOMAS HARDY THE CHURCH-PORCH by GEORGE HERBERT PEGGY, FR. THE GENTLE SHEPHERD by ALLAN RAMSAY DON JUAN: CANTO 4 by GEORGE GORDON BYRON LINES ON HEARING THAT LADY BYRON WAS ILL by GEORGE GORDON BYRON |