Page:Roden Noel - A Little Child's Monument - 1881.pdf/39

The rude, immense, straight pillars of grey pine
Scale heaven, sustaining tempest-writhen roofs
Of scant, green, level umbrage; they are built
Athwart yon vaporous and vasty walls
Of far-off mountain: over them arise
Ruinous tower, fantastic pinnacle,
And icy spire in a blue burning air.
They overhang deep, forest-filled ravines
Wandering seaward; whose dim serpentine
Night ever hears a solemn utterance
Of torrents, with deep monotone attuned
To these wind-oracles of ancient pine.
Yonder a gaunt trunk-Skeleton upbraids
With blasted arms the Bolt that shattered it.
Tusky black monsters reign within the gloom
Of forest, and dead waters desolate:
Dim mists drive blindly through portentous trees,
While a weird Sun blinks dwarfed within the drilt:
Legions of shadowy shaggy ilex climb
Yon narrow-cloven hollows of the crag.

Now evening falls: an aromatic breath
Of amber oozing from a dun-red bark,
And mountain herb, and many a mountain flower
Pervades the air slow clearing from the cloud:
A vaselike cleft between two snowy peaks
Glowingly fills with a pale violet;
Beneath appears fair Ocean's purple line,