Storm: to the Theme of Polyphemus

Mortal I stand upon the lifeless hills

That jut their cragged bones against the sky:

I crawl upon their naked ebony,

And toil across the scars of Titan ills

Dealt by the weaponing of gods and devils:

I climb their uppermost deserted levels,

And see how Heaven glowers his one eye

Blood-red and black-browed in the sullen sky,

While all his face is livid as a corpse

And wicked as a snake's: see how he warps

His sultry beam across the misted sea,

As if he grudged its darkling ministry.

He looks so covetous, I think he hides

— Jetsam of the slow ethereal tides —

Some cursed and battered Sailor of the Spheres:

All night he ravens on him and his peers,

But with the day he straddles monstrously

Across the earth in churlish shepherdry,

A-hungered for his hideous nightly feast.

But storms are gathering in the whitened East:

The day grows darker still, and suddenly

That lone and crafty Prisoner of the Sky

Plunges his murky torch in Heaven's Eye:

The blinded, screaming tempest trumpets out

His windy agonies: Oh, he will spout

His boiling rains upon the soggy air

And heave great rocking planets: he will tear

And snatch the screeching comets by the hair

To fling them all about him in the sea,

And blast the wretch's fatal Odyssey!

The great convulsions of the Deity

Rumble in agony across the sky:

His thunders rattle in and out the peaks:

His lightnings jab at every word He speaks:

— At every heavenly curse the cloud is split

And daggered lightnings crackle out of it.

Like a steep shower of snakes the hissing rain

Flickers its tongues upon the muddied plain,

Writhing and twisting on the gutted rocks

That tremble at the heavy thunder-shocks:

Soon from the hub on Heaven's axel-tree

The frozen hail flies spinning, and the sea

Is lashed beneath me to a howling smoke

As if the frozen fires of hell had woke

And cracked their icy flames in the face of Heaven.

Withered and crouching and scarce breathing even,

And battered as a gnat upon a wall

I cling and gasp — climb to my feet, and fall,

And crawl at last beneath a lidded stone,

Careless if all the earth's foundations groan

And strain in the heaving of this devilry,

Careless at last whether I live or die.

So the vast AEschylean tragedy

Rolls to its thunderous appointed close:

With final mutterings each actor goes:

And the huge Heavenly tragedian

Tears from his face the massy mask and wan,

And shines resplendent on the shattered stage

As he has done from age to bewildered age,

Giving the lie to all his mimic rage.