THE winds of the winter have breathed their dirges
Far over the wood and the leaf-strown plain;
They have passed, forlorn, by the mountain verges
Down to the shores of the moaning main;
And the breast of the smitten sea divides,
Till the voice of winds and the voice of tides
Seem blent with the roar of the central surges,
Whose fruitless furrows are sown with rain.
The pines look down, and their branches shiver
On the misty slopes of the mountain wall,
And I hear the shout of a mountain river
Through the gloom of the ghostly gorges call;
While from drifting depths of the troubled sky
Outringeth the eagle's wild reply,
So shrill that the startled echoes quiver;
And the veil of the tempest is over all.
O groaning forest! O wind that rushes
Unfettered and fierce as a doom malign!
How the pulses leap, how the heart-tide flushes
The temples and brow like the flush of wine,
As I pause, as I hearken the vast commotion
Of the air, of the earth, of the wakened ocean;
And my soul goes forth with the storm that crushes,
With the battling foam and the blinding brine.
Yea, my soul is rent by a tempest stronger
Than ever was Nature's, with ruin rife,
And the flame of its lightnings can bide no longer,
Ensheathed at the core of a clouded life;
And its pent-up thunders, unloosed at last,
Keep time to the rhythmic rage of the blast,
For my spirit, half-maddened by Fates that wrong her,
Is shaken by passion, and hot with strife!
Ah, God! for the wings of the eagle above me,
With their steadfast vigor and royal might;
Ah, God! for an impulse like theirs to move me
In endless courses of upward flight;
The clouds may billow, the vapors heave,
But still his pinions the darkness cleave;
And proudly serene, in those realms above me
He is soaring from conquered height to height:
Till at length, his great, broad vans at even
And stately poise on the airy stream,
I mark, through the rifts of the turbid heaven
His form outflashed like a wingèd beam;
And I ask, "Shall my spirit soar like his?
Shall it ever soar in the peace and bliss
Of the shining heights and the glory given
To the will unvanquished, the faith supreme?"
