Classic Poem

Vast crags of granite, piled in rugged mass
Above a foaming cataract, whose roar
Thunders along the solitary pass;
Dark, towering pines, that cast their shadows o'er
Abysses that seem fathomless, where sleep
Impenetrable glooms, thick, heavy, cold,
That in their centuries of silence keep,
Shadows that when man came were bent and old.

A darksome cave, wind haunted, and below
A deep lake lying like a mirror, where
Show with their crowns of never-melting snow,
The mountains that above it pierce the air;
And far beyond these, poised on tireless wing
A solitary eagle, whose keen eye
Watches a panther, all prepared to spring
Upon a dun deer that is grazing nigh.

Up from the hills, like mad waves wildly driven
Upon a shaggy, wreck-strewn reef, the clouds
Roll fast and furious o'er the western heaven,
Robing the distance in wide, flowing shrouds;
And low the muttered thunder gruffly speaks,
While swift along the surface of the plain
The wind gust flies, and from the darkness breaks
The lurid lightnings, linked in living chain.

On moves the clouds. The panther makes his spring,
The affrighted deer sinks quivering in his hold,
And as he grimly to its throat doth cling,
The crags light up with a fierce flash of gold,
And stricken by a thunder-bolt he lies.
The rain comes rushing through the valleys low,
The eagle screams, and slowly circling, flies
Still higher up into the sun's bright glow.

The storm sweeps past; the high peaks grow alight
In the clear glory of a noonday sun;
The roaring cataract, with added might
Between its boundaries of rock doth run;
Into the darksome cave the water sends
A radiance, making it grow wan and gray,
And where the sunlight with the shadow blends,
Lies the dead panther and his bleeding prey.