A Storm in the Mountains

by Charles Harpur

A lonely Boy, far venturing from his home,
With a rude-visaged Herdsman do I roam:
A lonely, wilful boy of scarce eleven,
'Mid rock-brow'd mountains heaping up to heaven!
Here huge-piled ledges, like a hanging wall,
Stare into haggard chasms that appal;
There the vast ridges are all rent in jabs,
Or hunched with cones, or pinnacled with crags!
A rude peculiar world, the prospect lies
Bounded in circuit by the bending skies.

Now at some stone-rimm'd tank, scooped hy the shocks
Of rain-floods leaping from the upper rocks,
I drink, and muse,—or mark the wide-spread herd,
Or list the tinkling of the dingle-bird:
And now tow'rds some wild-hanging shade I stray,
To shun the bright oppression of the day.

Why congregate the swallows in the air,
And northward then in rapid flight repair?
Unsettled all at once, and roaming slow
With heads declined, why do the oxen low?
With sudden swelling din, remote yet harsh,
Why war the bullfrogs in the tea-tree marsh?
Instinctively along the sultry sky
I turn a listless yet enquiring eye,
And mark that now, with a most gradual pace,
A solemn Trance keeps creaming o'er its face;
Yon clouds that late were labouring past the sun,
Reached by its death-like spell, one after one,
Heavily halt;—as in some desert land.
A pilgrim-horde at even, band by band.
Keeps halting 'mid the grey interminable sand.
And now, descending with a slumbrous weight,
its sullen influence settles on the great
Heads of the mountains, and the airs that play'd
About their rugged foreheads—all are laid:
While drawing close the farthest hills appear,
As in a dream's weird prospect—strangely near!
Till into wood resolves their robe of blue,
And the grey crags come bluffly into view.
Such are the signs and tokens that presage
A Summer Hurricane's forthcoming rage.

At length the South sends out her cloudy heaps,
And up the glens a dusky dimness creeps,
The birds, late warbling in the hanging green
Of the steep brakes, some more effectual screen
Seek now,—in silence skimming o'er the scene.
The herd in doubt no longer wanders wide,
But gathering, hurries for yon mountain's side,
Whose echoes, surging to their trampling, seem
The muttered troubles of some Giant's dream.

Fast the dun legions of the mustering Storm
Throng denser, or protruding columns form:
When splashing forward from their cloudy lair,
Convolving flames, like scouting dragons, glare:
Low thunders follow, labouring up the sky:
And as forerunning blasts come trumping by,
At once the Forest bows!—a mighty stir!—
Bows as in homage to the Thunderer.

Hark! from the wild dogs' blood-polluted dens
In the gloom-hidden chasms of the glens,
Long fitful howls the burthened ear assail:
And huddling whispers hiss within the gale!
As the dread stir had wakened from their sleep
Wild Spirits cloistered in each caverned steep,
Who wrapt them in the gloom, and rose amain,
To vengefully wanton in the Hurricane!

The glow of day is quenched—expunged the sun
By cloud on cloud dark rolling into one,
Whose sable bosom, as the whirlwind sweeps
Its surface, heaves into enormous heaps,
.And seems a pendant ocean to the view,
With weltering whale-like forms all hugely roughened through.

Now like a shudder at great Nature's heart,
The turmoil grows; and Wonder, with a start,
Marks right o'erhead the Tempest King's career,
Girt with black horror and wide-flaming fear!
Arriving thunders, mustering on his path,
Swell more and more the artillery of his wrath,
As still in widening circles it extends;—
And then—at once—in utter silence ends!
Portentous silence! Time keeps breathing past,
Yet it continues! May this marvel last?
Tingles the boding ear; and up the glens
Instinctive dread comes howling from the wild dogs' dens.

Terrific Vision! Heaven's great ceiling splits,
And a vast globe of writhing fire emits,
Which flanking out in one unbroken stream,
Spans the black concave like a burning beam
A moment:—then from end to end it snakes
With a quick motion, and in thunder breaks!
Peal rolled on peal! while heralding the sound,
As each concussion shakes the solid ground,
Fierce flames coil snake-like round the rocky wens
Of the red hills, or hiss into the glens;
Or thick through heaven, like swords of fire, they swarm
And cleave the teeming cisterns of the storm,
Whereat prone torrents (searching every gash)
Split by the blast, come sheeting, with a dash
Most multitudinous,—down through the trees,
And 'gainst the smoking crags that beetle over these.

On yon grey Peak, with rock-encrusted roots,
The seeming Patriarch of the Wood upshoots,
In whose proud spreading top's imperial height
'The mountain eagle loveth most to 'light:
Now dimly seen through the tempestuous air,
His form seems harrow'd by a mad despair,
As with his ponderous arms uplifted high
He wrestles with the Storm and thrashes at the sky!
Not long!—a bolt is heard to hurtle there—
Follows a crash! and lo, the Peak is bare!
Huge fragments only, hurrying from it fast,
Are seen,—or upward or beyond it cast,
Like crude-winged, mad limb'd monsters squandering in the blast!

The darkness thickens. With despairing cry,
From shattered boughs the rain-drenched parrots fly!
Loose rocks wash rumbling from the mountains round,
And half the forest strews the smoking ground!
Stemm'd by the wet crags the blasts wilder moan,
And the caves labour with a ghastlier groan!
Resistless torrents down the gorges flow
With rising clamour to the glens below,
And where from craggy falls their volumes leap,
Bear with them,—down, in many a whirling heap,
Arboreous wrecks that marked the wasteful path
Of the loud Hurricane's all-trampling wrath,
While to their dread percussions, inward sent,
The hearts of the great Hills beat with astonishment!

Strange darings seize me as I view this strife
Of Nature's powers; and, heedless of my life,
I stand exposed. And does some fated charm
Hold me secure from elemental harm,
That in the mighty riot I may see
My own soul in its outward mystery?
Soul wildly manifest—a protean form
Clothing with higher life the Being of the Storm.

The Hurricane's o'erblown;—but yet afar
Is heard the rattling of the thunder-car.
The clouds disperse; the sun bursts forth, his rays
Clothe the wet landscape with a spangling blaze.
Thea birds begin to sing a lively strain,
And all the gentler echoes ring it o'er again.
The clustered herd is spreading out to graze,
Though lessening torrents still a hundred ways
Plash downward: and from many a tanky crag
A mantling gush leaps frequent like a startled stag.

At length no longer do the torrents flow,
Their travel's ended in the lakes below.
O'er all the freshened Scene no sound is heard,
Save the short twitter of some busied bird,
Or a faint rustling, caused amongst the trees
By gusty fragments of a broken breeze,
Round with unwonted buoyancy I stroll,
And a new happiness o'erflows my soul,
While every shady nook and sunny brow
Presents some pleasantness unmarked till now.

Thus when the elements of human life
Burst with an earth-shake into mortal strife,
Wish'd Peace, returning like a bird of calm,
Brings to the wounded world a thrice endeared balm.