[Pg 155]

The soundless cloud whose thunderous heart was dumb

Swelled, lowered, and shrank to feel its conqueror come.

Yet high from heaven its empire vast and vain

Frowned, and renounced not night's reluctant reign.

The serpentine swift sounds and shapes wherein

The stainless sea mocks earth and death and sin,

Crawls dark as craft, or flashes keen as hate,

Subdued and insubmissive, strong like fate

And weak like man, bore wrathful witness yet

That storms and sins are more than suns that set;

That evil everlasting, girt for strife

Eternal, wars with hope as death with life.

The dark sharp shifting wind that bade the waves

Falter, lose heart, bow down like foes made slaves,

And waxed within more bitter as they bowed,

Baffling the sea, swallowing the sun with cloud,

Devouring fast as fire on earth devours

And hungering hard as frost that feeds on flowers,

Clothed round with fog that reeked as fume from hell,

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