The Passing of the Storm, and Other Poems. Alfred Castner King
nature's architecture seen.
From yawning chasm and abyss,
Rose minaret and precipice,
Carved by the tireless hand of time,
In forms fantastic, yet sublime,
While spires impregnable and high,
Were profiled on the lowering sky.
Exceeding the tremendous height
Of brother peaks, on left and right,
In his commanding station placed,
The giant of the rocky waste
With awe-inspiring aspect stood,
The sentry of the solitude,
Guarding the mountainous expanse
With his imposing battlements.
In rock-ribbed armor panoplied,
With rugged walls on every side,
Beseamed with countless scars and rents,
From combat with the elements,
He towered with mute and massive form,
A challenge to the gathering storm.
This overshadowing mountain peak
In solemn silence seemed to speak
A prophecy of arctic doom;
As in his frigid splendor dressed,
He reared aloft his frozen crest,
Surmounted by a snowy plume.
His wrinkled and forbidding brow
A sombre shadow seemed to throw
O'er other crags as wild and stern,
Which frowned defiance in return.
The wind, lugubrious and sad,
In doleful accents, soft and low,
Mourned through the dismal forests, clad
In weird habiliments of snow,
As if, forsooth, the sylvan ghosts
Had mobilized in pallid hosts,
To haunt their rugged solitudes,
The spectres of departed woods.
And with uninterrupted flow
The streamlet, underneath the snow,
Answered the wind's despondent moan
With plaint of gurgling monotone;
Or, locked in winter's stern embrace,
No longer trickled in its bed,
But found a frigid resting place
In stationary ice, instead.
The crystal snowflakes gently fell,
Enrobing mountain, plain and dell,
In mantle spotless and complete,
As nature in her winding sheet.
Layer upon layer fell fast and deep
Till every cliff, abrupt and steep,
Was crowned with coronal of white.
Capricious gusts, which whirl and sift,
Built comb and overhanging drift,
From feathery flakes so soft and light.
More thickly flew the snow and fast;
The wind developed and the blast
Soon churned the tempest, till the air
Seemed but a white and whirling glare,
Through which the penetrating eye
No shape nor contour might descry.
The poor belated traveller,
Who braved the rigor of that day,
Might thank his bright protecting star,—
If orbs of pure celestial ray,
Far in the scintillating skies,
Preside o'er human destinies,—
That he, bewildered and distressed,
Had warded off exhaustion's rest,
And in that maze of pine and fir
Escaped an icy sepulchre.
When driving snows accumulate,
They yield to the tremendous weight.
And down the mountain's rugged sides
The mass with great momentum slides,
Cleaving the fragile spruce and pine,
Which stand in its ill-fated line,
As bearded grain, mature and lithe,
Goes down before the reaper's scythe.
Or, when the cyclone's baleful force,
In flood of atmospheric wrath,
Pursues its devastating course,
Leaving but ruin in its path;
Despoiling in a moment's span
The most exalted works of man;
Or waters, suddenly set free,
When some black thunder cloud is rent,
Rush down a wild declivity
With irresistible descent,
Depositing on every hand
A layer of sediment and sand;
With swift and spoliating flow,
Uprooting many a noble tree,
To strew the desert wastes below
With scattered drift-wood and debris;
Such is the dreadful avalanche,
Which rends the forest, root and branch.
From dangers in such varied form,
And the discomforts of the storm,
Small wonder 'twas the mountaineer
Left not his fireside's ruddy cheer;
But from behind the bolted door
Discerned the tempest's strident roar,
Or heard the pendent icicle,
Which, from the eaves, in fragments fell,
As some more formidable blast
In paroxysmal fury passed.
It shook with intermittent throes,
Of boisterous, spasmodic power,
A most substantial hut, which rose,
As summer breeze sways grass or flower
And e'en the dull immobile ground
Trembled in sympathy profound.
Such was the fury of the storm,
As if the crystal flakes had met
With militating hosts, to swarm
In siege about its parapet.
When every rampant onslaught failed,
The blast in wanton frenzy wailed.
As