Again the spirit of a fearful change Came stealing o’er the blue and tranquil heaven— A hollow, rushing murmur filled the air, And the low sobbing of the rising wind Grew deeper, till in howling gusts it whirled Dark wreaths of earthy fragments to the sky, As though the maddened gnomes were hurling death Against the vapory armaments of air; And lurid flames with blue and ghastly glare Gleamed o’er the face of Nature till it blanched, As though the warning of the last dread trump Had smote her guilt upon a coward heart. The earthquake rising from his burning lair, Deep in the bosom of a rock-ribbed world, Shook everlasting hills from out his path, Like a roused lion flinging from his mane The dewy drops of morning. At his tread The pale earth trembled, and anon there came A crushing down of rocky battlements, Which, for a moment, high and quivering hung, On cloud-crowned pinnacles, then thundering fell Far down the dark, immeasurable void Which yawned beneath them like the livid lips Of fierce, insatiate hell. He tore away The iron nerves from that strong mountain’s heart, As though the destiny of a conqueror lay Deep hid within it, and the hour was come When he must march to seek it, in a last And wild death-revel. As this passed away, In racking throes, which might have seemed the strong Convulsive shudder of dissolving worlds, The earth moaned feebly, as a dying child Will murmur faintly in its fever-dream— Then darkness gathered round it, like the deep, Black jaws of cold annihilation. It came—it vanished—and “the Lord was not” Throned high upon the earthquake’s blasting rage; But, at the echo of His chariot wheels, The iron land tossed like the ocean waves, And mountains dashed aloft their crested heads As surging billows flout a stormy sky.