THAT flying angel's torrent cry Will hurl the mountains through the sky! A wind like fifty winds at once Through the bedragoned kingdom runs, An army of rain slants icy stings At many a wretch afield who clings His cloak of straw, with glistening spines Like a prodigious porcupine's. The reptile grasses by his path Wind sleek as unction from that Wrath Which with a glassy claw uproots The broad-leaved @3kiri@1, flays and loots Torn and snarled sinews, leaves for dead The young crops with the shining head, While blotched blunt melons darkly dot The slaughtered swathes like cannon-shot. The lotus in each pond upheaves Its sacred, slow, appealing leaves, And many a bush with wrestling jerk Defies the daemon's murderous work -- Yet nature stares white-lipped, to read In Chance's eye what desperate deed? A kinder god discerns, replies, And stills the land's storm-shouts to sighs; The clouds in massy folds apart Disclose the day's bright bleeding heart, Huge plumes and scarves black-tossing wide As if a Kubla Khan had died! From flame to flame the vision glows, Till all the pools of heaven unclose The lotus-light, the hue, the balm Of wisdom infinitely calm. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...IN ROMNEY MARSH by JOHN DAVIDSON THE BRIDGE by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW AMORETTI: 30 by EDMUND SPENSER THEY CALL IT BUSINESS by CHARLES G. ADAMS STORM AT SEA (1) by ALCAEUS OF MYTILENE EPIGRAM by DECIMUS MAGNUS AUSONIUS |