Early Poems (1859-70). Mount Erebus
(A Fragment) A mighty theatre of snow and fire, Girt with perpetual Winter, and sublime By reason of that lordly solitude Which dwells for ever at the world's white ends; And in that weird-faced wilderness of ice, There is no human foot, nor any paw Or hoof of beast, but where the shrill winds drive The famished birds of storm across the tracts Whose centre is the dim mysterious Pole. Beyond—yea far beyond the homes of man, By water never dark with coming ships, Near seas that know not feather, scale, or fin, The grand volcano, like a weird Isaiah, Set in that utmost region of the Earth, Doth thunder forth the awful utterance, Whose syllables are flame; and when the fierce Antarctic Night doth hold dominionship Within her fastnessess, then round the cone Of Erebus a crown of tenfold light Appears; and shafts of marvellous splendour shoot Far out to east and west and south and north, Whereat a gorgeous dome of glory roofs Wild leagues of mountain and transfigured waves, And lends all things a beauty terrible. Far-reaching lands, whereon the hand of Change Hath never rested since the world began, Lie here in fearful fellowship with cold And rain and tempest. Here colossal horns Of hill start up and take the polar fogs Shot through with flying stars of fire; and here, Above the dead-grey crescents topped with spires Of thunder-smoke, one half the heaven flames With that supremest light whose glittering life Is yet a marvel unto all but One— The Entity Almighty, whom we feel Is nearest us when we are face to face With Nature's features aboriginal, And in the hearing of her primal speech And in the thraldom of her primal power. While like the old Chaldean king who waxed Insane with pride, we human beings grow To think we are the mightiest of the world, And lords of all terrestrial things, behold The sea rolls in with a superb disdain Upon our peopled shores, omnipotent; And while we set up things of clay and call Our idols gods; and while we boast or fume About the petty honours, or the poor, Pale disappointments of our meagre lives, Lo, changeless as Eternity itself, The grand Antarctic mountain looms outside All breathing life; and, with its awful speech, Is as an emblem of the Power Supreme, Whose thunders shake the boundless Universe, Whose lightnings make a terror of all Space.
Henry Kendall’s other poems:
