Explore "Storm Music (the Trial as by Fire)" by Henry Van Dyke on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
O Music hast thou only heard / The laughing river, the singing bird, / The murmuring wind in the poplar-trees, -- / Nothing but Nature's melodies? / Nay, thou hearest all her tones, / As a Queen must hear! / Sounds of wrath and fear, / Mutterings, shouts, and moans, / Mildness, tumult, and despair, -- / All she has that shakes the air / With voices fierce and wild! / Thou art a Queen and not a dreaming child, -- / Put on thy crown and let us hear thee reign / Triumphant in a world of storm and strain!
Echo the long-drawn sighs / Of the mounting wind in the pines; / And the sobs of the mounting waves that rise / In the dark of the troubled deep / To break on the beach in fiery lines. / Echo the far-off roll of thunder, / Rumbling loud / And ever louder, under / The blue-black curtain of cloud, / Where the lightning serpents gleam, / Echo the moaning / Of the forest in its sleep / Like a giant groaning / In the torment of a dream.