Classic Poem

A SKETCH .

I T was a lovely night; — the crescent moon
(A bark of beauty on its dark blue sea,)
Winning its way amid the billowy clouds,
Unoared, unpiloted, moved on. The sky
Was studded thick with stars, which glittering streamed
An intermittent splendour through the heavens.
I turned my glance to earth; — the mountain winds
Were sleeping in their caves, — and the wild sea,
With its innumerous billows, melted down
To one unmoving mass, lay stretched beneath
In deep and tranced slumber; giving back
The host above with all its dazzling shene,
To Fancy's ken, as though the luminous sky
Had rained down stars upon its breast. Suddenly,
The scene grew dim: those living lights rushed out,
And the fair moon, with all her gorgeous train,
Had vanished like the frost-work of a dream.

Darkness arose; — and volumed clouds swept o'er
Earth and the ocean. Through the gloom, at times,
Sicilian Ætna's blood-red flame was seen
Fitfully flickering. The stillness now
Yielded to murmurs hurtling on the air
From out her deep-voiced crater; and the winds
Burst through their bonds of adamant, and lashed
The weltering ocean, that so lately lay
Calm as the slumbers of a cradled child,
To a demoniac's madness. The broad wave
Swelled into boiling surges, which appeared,
Whene'er the mountain's lurid light revealed
Their progress to the eye, presumptuously
To dash against the ebon roof of heaven.

Then came a sound — a fearful, deafening sound —
Sudden and loud, as if an earthquake rent
The globe to its foundations! With a rush,
Startling deep Midnight on her throne, rose up,
From the red mouth of Ætna's burning mount,
A giant tree of fire, whence sprouted out
Thousands of boundless branches, which put forth
Their fiery foliage in the sky, and showered
Their fruit, the red-hot levin, to the earth,
In terrible profusion. Some fell back
Into the hell from whence they sprang; and some,
Gaining an impulse from the winds that raged
Unceasingly around, sped o'er the main,
And, hissing, dived to an eternal home
Beneath its yawning billows. The black smoke,
Blotting the snows that shroud chill Cuma's height,
Rolled down the mountain's sides, girding its base
With artificial darkness; for the sea,
Catania's palaces and towers, and even
The far-off shores of Syracuse, revealed
In the deep glare that deluged heaven and earth,
Flashed forth in fearful light upon the eye.
And there was seen a lake of liquid fire
Streaming and streaming slowly on its course;
And widening as it flowed (like the dread jaws
Of some huge monster ere its prey be fanged).
At its approach the loftiest pines bent down,
And strewed its surface with their trunks; — the earth
Shook at its coming; — towns and villages,
Deserted of their 'habitants, were whelmed
Amid the flood, and lent it ampler force; —
The noble's palace, and the peasant's cot,
Alike but served to swell its fiery tide:
Shrieks of wild anguish rushed upon the gale, —
And universal Nature seemed to wrestle
With the gaunt forms of Darkness and Despair.