And thus upon the land Earth's ravage is laid bare; Slapped by the storm's fierce hand, The wildcat and the bear Lie huddled in the sand That marks their common lair; The trees in angry lurch That grew beside each other-- The hemlock and the birch-- Now strive with one another, In strangely human mood, Born of unnatural feud.
Around the hoary mountain sides The storm hurls its impetuous shock, Is answered by the torrent's tides, The iron echoes of the rock. Gone are the woodland notes of spring, The airs of summer's short-lived breath, The autumn, too, has taken wing, The year has rushed into its death. Gone, like the memory of a dream, A rainbow hovering o'er a stream; And we, of nature's joys bereft, Are with her deepening shadows left, With grey upon the sea, And driftwood on the reef, With winter in the tree, And death within the leaf.
Far, far away, across the distant deep, Heaven's lightnings flash from out a darker scroll; Midnight and darkness in wild chaos keep A dawnless vigil, as slow thunders roll Over a world upon whose face the storm Breaks, and within the terrors of eclipse, Fall the swift strokes of Death, clothed in the form Of some dread angel of Apocalypse. There rides a tempest heedless of the check Of law, and with no mandate but its will, Whose function lies alone in power to wreck, That never hears the fiat, "Peace, be still!" There, through deep, winding valleys that had known The quiet haunts of peasants; through the green, Sweet-tufted verdure that the spring had sown; Through glens where only roe and fawn were seen In peace; through plains where once the sunset's brush Placed its soft crimson on the silent streams; There, through that land that often loved the hush Of evening and the tenderness of dreams, Rolls now the bugle with its alien blast, The cry of battle on the midnight air, The fiery summons to earth's legions massed Mid bayonets gleaming in the rocket's glare; And streams that to the North Sea once had brought The dawn's white silver and the sunset's gold, Now pour such tides as Nature never wrought. The ruddier treasures of a wealth untold.
O Nature! Thou that lovest life In herb and brute and feathered kind, Who leadest from the night's long strife The morn with rays of promise lined; Who bringest forth the vital glow To bathe the trees in glorious light, And bid the woodland flowers grow, Clothed spotless in their raiment bright; Who givest food to hart and hare Upon the snowy mountain's crest, And to the ravens everywhere, The storm-proof covert of their nest;-- Hast thou within thy bounteous plan, So rich and measureless and mild, No boon wherewith to succour man, Thy youngest, feeblest, blindest child? Prostrate upon a formless field, Bedewed with unavailing tears, While the slow hours, faltering, yield This nameless triad of the years; What balm shall touch his stricken eyes? What hand shall drive away his dead? What tones shall quieten his cries? What voice shall resurrect his dead?