LXIX. The roar of waters!-from the headlong height The fall of waters! rapid as the light The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss; The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss, And boil in endless torture; while the sweat Of their great agony, wrung out from this Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set, LXX. And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again Is an eternal April to the ground, Making it all one emerald:-how profound The gulf! and how the giant element From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound, Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful vent LXXI. To the broad column which rolls on, and shows More like the fountain of an infant sea Torn from the womb of mountains by the throes Of a new world, than only thus to be Parent of rivers, which flow gushingly, With many windings, through the vale :-Look back! Lo! where it comes like an eternity, As if to sweep down all things in its track, Charming the eye with dread,-a matchless cataract, LXXII. Horribly beautiful! but on the verge, From side to side, beneath the glittering morn, Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn: LXXIII. Once more upon the woody Apennine, The thundering lauwine-might be worshipp'd more; Her never-trodden snow, and seen the hoar Glaciers of bleak Mont-Blanc both far and near, And in Chimari heard the thunder-hills of fear, LXXIV. The Acroceraunian mountains of old name; Heaves like a long-swept wave about to break, Too much, to conquer for the poet's sake, The drill'd dull lesson, forced down word by word And on Parnassus seen the eagles fly For our remembrance, and from out the plain Too much, to conquer for the poet's sake, The drill'd dull lesson, forced down word by word |