VII The Monsoon
Reading edition
The Monsoon
I
What ails the solitude?
Is this the Judgment Day?
The sky is red as blood;
The very rocks decay
And crack and crumble, and
There is a flame of wind
Wherewith the burning sand
Is ever mass’d and thin’d.
Even the sickly Sun
Is dimmèd by the dearth,
And screaming dead leaves run
About the desolate earth.
Die then; we are accurst!
And strike, consuming God!
The very tigers thirst
Too much to drink of blood;
The eagle soareth not;
The viper bites herself;
The vulture hath forgot
To rend the dying wolf.
The world is white with heat;
The world is rent and riv’n;
The world and heavens meet;
The lost stars cry in heav’n.
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II
Art thou an Angel—speak,
Stupendous Cloud that comest?
What wrath on whom to wreak?
Redeemest thou, or doomest?
Thine eyes are of the dead;
A flame within thy breast
Thy giant wings outspread,
Like Death’s, upon the west
Thy lifted locks of hair
Are flames of fluttering fire;
Thy countenance, of Despair
Made mad with inner ire.
III
Who cries! The night is black
As death and not as night;
The world is fallen back
To nothing; sound and light
And moon and stars and skies,
Thunder and lightning—all
Gone, gone! Not even cries
The cricket in the hall,
The dog without. At last
The end of all the hours.
Was that a Spirit pass’d
Between the slamming doors?
We slept not yet we wake!
Was it a voice that cried,
‘Awake, ye sleepless; wake,
Ye deathless who have died’?
No voice. No light, no sound.
It was the fancy that
At midnight makes rebound
Of thoughts we labour at
At mid-day. Let us sleep.
The night is very black,
The heat a madness—sleep
Before the day comes back.
Who cries!—The voice again!
It is the storm that breaks!
The tempest and the rain!
The quivering crash that shakes!
The thunder and the flash,
The brand that rips and roars,
The winds of God that dash
And split a thousand doors!
The chariots of God
That gallop on the plain
And shake the solid sod!
Awake!—The rain, the rain!
Thunder and burst, O Sky;
Thunder and boil, O Deep;
Let the thick thunder cry;
Let the live lightning leap!
Smite white light like the sword
Of Heav’n from heav’n’s height;
Consume the thing abhor’d
And quell the dreadful night!
Smite white light like the brand
Of God from heav’n to earth;
And purge the desolate land
Of this destroying dearth!
IV
O Wilderness of Death,
O Desert rent and riv’n,
Where art thou?—for the breath
Of heav’n hath made thee Heav’n.
I know not now these ways;
The rocky rifts are gone,
Deep-verdured like the braes
Of blest Avilion.
Here where there were no flowers
The heav’nly waters flow,
And thro’ a thousand bowers
Innum’rable blossoms blow.
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