  Mortal I stand upon the lifeless hills That jut their craggÈd bones against the sky: I crawl upon their naked ebony, And toil across the scars of Titan ills Dealt by the weaponing of gods and devils: I climb their uppermost deserted levels, And see how Heaven glowers his one eye Blood-red and black-browed in the sullen sky, While all his face is livid as a corpse And wicked as a snake’s: see how he warps His sultry beam across the misted sea, As if he grudged its darkling ministry. He looks so covetous, I think he hides —Jetsam of the slow ethereal tides— Some cursed and battered Sailor of the Spheres: All night he ravens on him and his peers, But with the day he straddles monstrously Across the earth in churlish shepherdry, A-hungered for his hideous nightly feast. But storms are gathering in the whitened East: The day grows darker still, and suddenly That lone and crafty Prisoner of the Sky Plunges his murky torch in Heaven’s Eye: The blinded, screaming tempest trumpets out His windy agonies: Oh, he will spout His boiling rains upon the soggy air And heave great rocking planets: he will tear And snatch the screeching comets by the hair To fling them all about him in the sea, And blast the wretch’s fatal Odyssey! The great convulsions of the Deity Rumble in agony across the sky: His thunders rattle in and out the peaks: His lightnings jab at every word He speaks: —At every heavenly curse the cloud is split And daggered lightnings crackle out of it. Like a steep shower of snakes the hissing rain Flickers its tongues upon the muddied plain, Writhing and twisting on the gutted rocks That tremble at the heavy thunder-shocks: Soon from the hub on Heaven’s axel-tree The frozen hail flies spinning, and the sea Is lashed beneath me to a howling smoke As if the frozen fires of hell had woke And cracked their icy flames in the face of Heaven. Withered and crouching and scarce breathing even, And battered as a gnat upon a wall I cling and gasp—climb to my feet, and fall, And crawl at last beneath a lidded stone, Careless if all the earth’s foundations groan And strain in the heaving of this devilry, Careless at last whether I live or die. So the vast Æschylean tragedy Rolls to its thunderous appointed close: With final mutterings each actor goes: And the huge Heavenly tragedian Tears from his face the massy mask and wan, And shines resplendent on the shattered stage As he has done from age to bewildered age, Giving the lie to all his mimic rage. |
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