’Tis dark around! yet darker still Within that melancholy clime, Where tireless, sleepless vulture-ill Sits blackly brooding over crime; The tempest has a deeper moan; The night-wind has a wilder tone; The thunder glares his troubled eye Amid the hollows of the sky; And sheeted lightnings swiftly stream From yonder cloud’s tremendous rack, And then with swifter stride they seem In pallid horror hurrying back. Groans in the dark tide of the air: Groans in the withered space around: Groans in the tempest’s sickly glare: Groans struggling under ground! And look! Lo! blacker clouds are swelling Around the thunder’s opened dwelling, Which with a Vulcan-torch illumes This realm of everlasting glooms; Set in the distance—see it stand Above that melancholy land— Wild, gloomy, solitary, grand! Heckla of spirits—placed afar, The lamp of ghastly heath and rill, As if like some malignant star ’Twould make them all more ghastly still. ROSANI. “Fit time!”—he cried with quivering brow, Tale such as mine was uttered now; When all the elements are stirred To hear a spirit’s fearful word. Let lightnings flash—let thunders roll, What terrors have they for the soul That flees the golden eye of day, And hates its beams e’en more than they! I’ve revell’d in their light before In many a sea, on many a shore— On many a rock—on many a deck— Yes! challenged them amid the wreck— When they and the remorseless sea Seem’d smiling on my agony. Yet! have I loved a milder glow Than yonder lurid fires bestow: There was a moment! glorious time! When I, amid my native bow’rs, Unmoved by care—unsoiled by crime— Would watch the sunshine beam for hours; It glowed of my own self a part, For all was sunshine in the heart, Which seemed an angel who had left, He knew not how, the stainless blue, And smiled, so long of light bereft, To find an angel wandering, too. But when I saw the bannered storm— Like giant rousing from his sleep— Uplift o’er heaven his awful form, And from the thunder-chamber sweep To his dread bridal with the flame Before their altar of the cloud, While all his minstrel-tempests came Around the shrine, in terror bowed,— I’ve smiled with other smile than this, For then, I, leaping from the sod, Saw, in their rude but meaning bliss, The wondrous glory of a God:— Yes! e’en when others quailed to see The red volcano light our clime, I’ve joyed, for in its ministry I only saw a torch sublime, Lighting with its tremendous glare The glorious pages of His book, Which men might read if they would dare Upon those awful leaves to look.