[Tempest, With Thunder And Lightning.]

CYPRIAN: What is this? ye heavens for ever pure, At once intensely radiant and obscure! Athwart the aethereal halls The lightning’s arrow and the thunder-balls The day affright, As from the horizon round, Burst with earthquake sound, In mighty torrents the electric fountains;— Clouds quench the sun, and thunder-smoke Strangles the air, and fire eclipses Heaven. Philosophy, thou canst not even Compel their causes underneath thy yoke: From yonder clouds even to the waves below The fragments of a single ruin choke Imagination’s flight; For, on flakes of surge, like feathers light, The ashes of the desolation, cast Upon the gloomy blast, Tell of the footsteps of the storm; And nearer, see, the melancholy form Of a great ship, the outcast of the sea, Drives miserably! And it must fly the pity of the port, Or perish, and its last and sole resort Is its own raging enemy. The terror of the thrilling cry Was a fatal prophecy Of coming death, who hovers now Upon that shattered prow, That they who die not may be dying still. And not alone the insane elements Are populous with wild portents, But that sad ship is as a miracle Of sudden ruin, for it drives so fast It seems as if it had arrayed its form With the headlong storm. It strikes—I almost feel the shock,— It stumbles on a jagged rock,— Sparkles of blood on the white foam are cast.