ams I nursed of honouring her are past,
And will not comfort me again.
I see a lurid sunlight throw its last
Wild gleam athwart the land whose shadows lengthen fast.

It does not seem so dreadful now
The horror stands out naked, stark, and still:
I am quite calm, and wonder how
My terror played such mad pranks with my will.
The North winds fiercely blow, I do not feel them chill.

All things must die: somewhere I read
What wise and solemn men pronounce of joy;
No sooner born, they say, than dead:
The strife of being, but a whirling toy
Humming a weary moan spun by capricious boy.

Has my soul reached a starry height
Majestically calm? No monster, drear
And shapeless, glares me faint at night;
I am not in the sunshine checked for fear
That monstrous shapeless thing is somewhere crouching near?

No; woe is me! far otherwise:
The naked horror numbs me to the bone;
In stupor calm its cold blank eyes
Set hard at mine. I do not fall or groan,
Our island Gorgon's face had changed me into stone.

XII. STORM.

Now thickening round the shrunken baseless sky,
Sullen vapours crawl
Climbing to masses, tumbled heavily
Grim in giant sprawl,
That smother up domed heaven's scud-fleckered height
And form like mortal armies ranged for fight.

This lighted gloom spreads ghastly on the land;
Sheep do crowd; and herds
Collecting, bellow pitifully bland.
Quiet are the birds
In ghostly trees that shiver not a sound:
And leaves decayed drop straight unto the ground.

Drearily solemn runs a monotone,
Heard through breathless hush,
Swollen torrents hissing far in lavish moan,
Foamed with headlong rush,
Sob on protesting, toward annihilation,
Their solitary dismal lamentation.

This gloom has sucked all interest from the scene,
Now changed wrathful grey:
Familiar things, that staring plain had been,
Fade in mists away:
At ambush, watching from its stormy lair,
Some danger hovering loads the stagnant air.

It serves to little purpose I may know
That electric law
Whereby the jagged glare and thunder-blow
Latent impulse draw;
No less my danger. Ha! that lightning flash
Proclaims in fire the coming thunder-crash.

But what care I though deluges down pour
Beating earth to mire,
Though heaven shattering with the thunder's roar
Scorcheth now in fire,
Though every planet molten from its place
Should trickle lost through everlasting space;

For this b