Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, FRAGMENTS FROM A METRICAL JOURNAL: ST. GOAR, by JOHN RUSKIN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

FRAGMENTS FROM A METRICAL JOURNAL: ST. GOAR, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Past a rock with frowning front
Last Line: Their tresses in his placid wave.
Subject(s): St. Goar, Germany


Past a rock with frowning front,
Wrinkled by the tempest's brunt,
By the Rhine we downward bore
Upon the village of St. Goar.
Bosomed deep among the hills,
Here old Rhine his current stills.
Loitering the banks between,
As if, enamored of the scene,
He had forgot his onward way
For a live-long summer day.
Grim the crags through whose dark cleft,
Behind, he hath a passage reft;
While, gaunt as gorge of hunted boar,
Dark yawns the foaming pass before,
Where the tormented waters rage,
Like demons in their Stygian cage,
In giddy eddies whirling round
With a sullen choking sound;
Or flinging far the scattering spray,
O'er the peaked rocks that bar his way.
—No marvel that the spell-bound Rhine,
Like giant overcome with wine,
Should here relax his angry frown,
And, soothed to slumber, lay him down
Amid the vine-clad banks that lave,
Their tresses in his placid wave.





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