Dithyrambics by Madison Cawein — Read

I. TEMPEST

Wrapped round of the night, as a monster is wrapped of the ocean, / Down, down through vast storeys of darkness, behold, in the tower / Of the heaven, the thunder! on stairways of cloudy commotion, / Colossal of tread, like a giant, from echoing hour to hour / Goes striding in rattling armor. / The Nymph, at her billow-roofed dormer / Of foam; and the Sylvan -- green-housed -- at her window of leaves appears; / -- As a listening woman, who hears / The approach of her lover, who comes to her arms in the night; / And, loosening the loops of her locks, / With eyes full of love and delight, / From the couch of her rest in ardor and haste arises. -- / The Nymph, as if breathed of the tempest, like fire surprises / The riotous bands of the rocks, / That face with a roar the shouting charge of the seas. / The Sylvan, -- through troops of the trees, / Whose clamorous clans with gnarly bosoms keep hurling / Themselves on the guns of the wind, -- goes wheeling and whirling.