TEMPEST

Wrapped round of the night, as a monster is wrapped of the ocean,

Down, down through vast storeys of darkness, behold, in the tower

Of the heaven, the thunder! on stairways of cloudy commotion,

Colossal of tread, like a giant, from echoing hour to hour

Goes striding in rattling armor...

The Nymph, at her billow-roofed dormer

Of foam; and the Sylvan — green-housed — at her window of leaves appears;

— As a listening woman, who hears

The approach of her lover, who comes to her arms in the night;

And, loosening the loops of her locks,

With eyes full of love and delight,

From the couch of her rest in ardor and haste arises.—

The Nymph, as if breathed of the tempest, like fire surprises

The riotous bands of the rocks,

That face with a roar the shouting charge of the seas.

The Sylvan,— through troops of the trees,

Whose clamorous clans with gnarly bosoms keep hurling

Themselves on the guns of the wind,— goes wheeling and whirling.

The Nymph, of the waves’ exultation upheld, her green tresses

Knotted with flowers of the hollow white foam, dives screaming;

Then bounds to the arms of the storm, who boisterously presses

Her hair and wild form to his breast that is panting and streaming.

The Sylvan,— hard-pressed by the wind, the Pan-footed air,—

On the violent backs of the hills,—

Like a flame that tosses and thrills

From peak to peak when the world of spirits is out,—

Is borne, as her rapture wills,

With glittering gesture and shout:

Now here in the darkness, now there,

From the rain-like sweep of her hair,—

Bewilderingly volleyed o'er eyes and o'er lips,—

To the lambent swell of her limbs, her breasts and her hips,

She flashes her beautiful nakedness out in the glare

Of the tempest that bears her away,—

That bears me away!

Away, over forest and foam, over tree and spray,

Far swifter than thought, far swifter than sound or than flame.

Over ocean and pine,

In arms of tumultuous shadow and shine...

Though Sylvan and Nymph do not

Exist, and only what

Of terror and beauty I feel and I name

As parts of the storm, the awe and the rapture divine

That here in the tempest are mine,—

The two are the same, the two are forever the same.