The sky is changed!--and such a change! O night, And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong, Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light Of a dark eye in woman! Far along, From peak to peak, the rattling crags among Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone cloud, But every mountain now hath found a tongue, And Jura answers, through her misty shroud, Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud! And this is in the night:--most glorious night! Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be A sharer in thy fierce and far delight,-- A portion of the tempest and of thee! How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea, And the big rain comes dancing to the earth! And now again ’tis black,--and now, the glee Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain mirth, As if they did rejoice o’er a young earthquake’s birth. _Byron._ * * * * * I’ll go along, no such sight to be shown, But to rejoice in splendour of mine own. _Shakspeare._ * * * * * But lo! the dome--the vast and wondrous dome, To which Diana’s marvel was a cell-- Christ’s mighty shrine above his martyr’s tomb! I have beheld the Ephesian’s miracle-- Its columns strew the wilderness, and dwell The hyæna and the jackal in their shade; I have beheld Sophia’s bright roofs swell Their glittering mass i’ the sun, and have surveyed Its sanctuary the while the usurping Moslem prayed; But thou, of temples old, or altars new, Standest alone--with nothing like to thee-- Worthiest of GOD, the holy and the true. Since Zion’s desolation, when that He Forsook his former city, what could be, Of earthly structures in his honour piled, Of a sublimer aspect? Majesty, Power, glory, strength, and beauty, all are aisled In this eternal ark of worship undefiled. Enter: its grandeur overwhelms thee not; And why? it is not lessened; but thy mind, Expanded by the genius of the spot, Has grown colossal, and can only find A fit abode wherein appear enshrined Thy hopes of immortality; and thou Shalt one day, if found worthy, so defined, See thy God face to face, as thou dost now His Holy of Holies, nor be blasted by his brow. _Byron._ * * * * * What peremptory, eagle-sighted eye Dares look upon the heaven of her brow, That is not blinded by her majesty? _Shakspeare._ * * * * * The glorious sun Stays in his course, and plays the alchymist, Turning, with splendour of his precious eye, The meagre, cloddy earth to glittering gold. _Shakspeare._ * * * * *