Classic Poem

Now if I call the storm, will the storm come?
When spreading clouds make pathways of their own
Along the foothills or the rocky crags,
The lofty pines are stilled or turned to stone,
Like things that motionless await their death,
Retreating not, charmed by the serpent's eyes.
Like conquering stream that flows and floods the brooks,
And over all its weighty chain must drag,
Knowing no shred of pity or of grace,
The cloud rolls o'er the mountain and the slopes,
Unfolding leisurely and lazily,
Or furls itself away from gazing eyes;
But wearies not nor tarries for a space.
Nought hinders it and no adversity.
It makes its heavy way —
It floats aloft,
Embraces and then strangles the bare wood,
Steeps it in shadows and the formless night,
Engulfs and drowns its boughs of foliage,
Its trembling branches and the massive trunks.
Just as they reared their tops towards the skies
They were overwhelmed, both small and great,
In clouds about their neck that muted them,
Floated and fled away, faded from there
Like wicked spectres bearing endless woe,
And compassed me and hunted me with chains,
Once more the power of light prevailed and rent the fearful gloom apart,
And through the sundered cloud I saw the river in wild mischief dart,
Its waters troubled like the ore that in the molten furnace raves —
Dark cumbrous wave — and showers of sparks dance on the trough or crest of waves.
Do stars and constellations war?
Is it their ruins fill the flow,
Or the hidden hand of God that stirs the waters, lighting there to sew.
And breakers of electric fire?
But see,
The plain is covered and the mountains meet.
And when the clouds like breakers closed me round
The forests trembled leagues away beyond,
And where the high woods rang with song was still,
And where the swift stream sang was silent now.

All living things were still and silence dread
Reigned from the earth's foundations to the skies,
As if an angel potentate had cried:
" On the byways and the highways, silence, reign! "
Dank was the darkness, gloomy, strange to see,
Like a breaker fashioned from primordial dust
Before God the Creator bade: " Be earth! "
It seized on us as if in armour cased,
Or like a kernel covered by its husk.
Like a thousand or ten thousand hidden eyes.
That search the secrets and the souls of men.
It ringed us round and covered us, while we
Were but a laughing-stock before its gaze.
And in the realm of graves and visions dim,
Of fantasies of thought and freaks of sight,
And when the thunder sings its raucous song,
I feel a man's heart in the heart of me.

Here am I! Who calls to a war in the shadows?
Are you mortals, as I am, or gnomes, weird and rare?
Did Topheth conceive you, uncouth and perverted?
Arise! Dare to face me — my arms are stripped bare.
My limbs are knit and every sinew taut,
Like bars of steel and like the roots of oak;
And at this magic moment on the peaks
I am brother to the storm, the woods, the rocks,
I dwell with thunder and I share its dread;
And for my footstool — this poor dwarf-like image —
Agelong dying, the fullness of the earth;
Nay were the darkness of seventy-seven-fold,
If Nature sent against me all its host
Of terrors, with eternal ruin joined,
Yet would I find the way to the mountain height!

So upward, upward, 'twixt the rocks and crags,
Hand over hand, ye weary, o'er the voids.
Cast off all thought of fear; what is strange fire
To you who have the light within your heart?
And when despair comes to his age perplexed,
Decay to its roots and hollow in the midst,
And a will-o'-the-wisp cast from the spreading cloud
Enters the world and into all therein,
Then be thou thy own light upon the way!
Go forward, freemen! Ye who slave and toil
Beneath your burden, heritage of shame,
Aimless for ever, shall remain despised.

And in those cobwebs ye have spun for bonds
To creatures of your fancy be for prey.
Go forward, thou, and if in emperor's crown
Or just a shepherd's scrip become thy lot,
Turn not to those who cry: " The man of spirit
Upsets your ordered world — he is a fool! "
Reply to him who asks thy way of thee:
" I seek my God: dost know where He may be? "