Page:Poems Welby.djvu/195

Compared with thine, what are the awful wonders
 Of the deep, fathomless, unbounded sea?
Or the storm-cloud whose lance of lightning sunders
The solid oak?—or even thine awful thunders,
      Niagara!

Hark! hear ye not those echoes ringing after
 Our gliding steps—my spirit faints with fear—
Those mocking tones, like subterranean laughter—
 Or does the brain grow wild with wandering here!
There may be spectres wild and forms appalling
 Our wandering eyes, where'er we rove, to greet—
Methinks I hear their low sad voices calling
Upon us now, and far away the falling
      Of phantom feet.

The glittering dome, the arch, the towering column,
 Are sights that greet us now on every hand,
And all so wild—so strange—so sweetly solemn—
 So like one's fancies formed of fairy land!
And these then are your works, mysterious powers!
 Your spells are o'er, around us, and beneath,
These opening aisles, these crystal fruits and flowers
And glittering grots and high-arched beauteous bowers,
      As still as death!

But yet lead on! perhaps than this fair vision,
 Some lovelier yet in darkling distance lies—
Some cave of beauty, like those realms elysian
 That ofttimes open on poetic eyes!