Typhon and Other Poems (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Yet words are written on an antique page In flowing rhyme and hieroglyphic dim, That tell of one rich-laden argosy Steered from the far abode of mortal men Toward some northern shore: how all day long A wondrous calm drooped on the lulling wave, And sleep enfolded each stout mariner Till fall of eve; when gentle breezes touched Beneath their prow the billow, and they neared The foam-fringed borders of an unknown sea; Then hung all motionless, like painted things. Agape and dumb, with glazed eyes, they saw A form immortal, marvellously fair, In horrid anguish writhing to and fro, The hapless prey of foes invisible; And, on the eastern boundary, giant cliffs, Shapen in limb and brow like beauteous men, Up-reared towards the sky. No more beheld: For downward from the gathered heavens slid A muttering cloud, a god-launched thunder-bolt, Enwreathed of lightning-flame and sulphurous smoke, Huge clad of dire disaster and dismay, That smote a frenzy through the yielding space, Till ocean leapt in fury from his rest Unto the arching skies, and clangour rolled, And tumult shook his fetters horrible Throughout the wide abyss. From stem to stern Shivered and burst in every beam and joint, Whirled down the steepest brink of dismal wreck, Unto those mariners their vessel seemed; Her freighted deck swept by the gluttonous seas, The sunny wines drunk from her open breast: Yet neither sunny wines, nor freighted deck, Even to the rude displacement of a hair, Felt any breath; but those beholding knew The angry gloom drop sudden from the sky; Saw lovely radiance beam o'er heaven and deep; Saw carven cliffs afar dissolve in dew; Heard the last rolling thunder move and fall; Heard billow-moaning sink to sweet unrest; Knew joyous calm unfold her brooding wings: Only a distant rumbling, like the so...