And, oh! when the sunlight comes heaping
With glitter the mist of those chasms,
The foam of those musical chasms,
You may hear a lamenting and weeping,
And see in the vastness far sweeping,
In wild and æolian spasms,
Down, down in those voluble chasms,
The Spirits of Light and of Darkness.
And the wave from the gray-hearted granite
In rivers rolls rippling around;
Meanders through shade-haunted forests,
Where many rock-barriers can span it,
And dash it in froth and in sound;
Where the nights with their great moons can wan it,
Or star its dark stillness profound.
V
And here with her harp doth she wander,
That daughter of music, twice kissed
Of the Spirits of Love and of Sorrow:
Yea, here doth she wander and ponder,
That maiden of moonlight and mist,
With starlight on hair and on wrist;
Yea, here doth she ponder and wander
'Mid blossoms with loveliness whist,
'Mid moonlight with fragrances kissed.
And ever her being grows fonder
Of forests where phantoms keep tryst,
The people of moon and of mist:
And often they troop to her singing,
As she sits 'mid the undulant cedars--
All savage of wildness and scent--
Whose tops to her beauty are bent,
Like the pennons and plumes of fierce leaders,
In worship and testament:
Like the pennons and plumes of fierce leaders,
All ragged with battle and rent.