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Title: The Thunder Storm
Author: James Avis Bartley [
More Titles by Bartley]
'Twas a cloudless night in August, and the earth all silent lay,
With hills, and glittering rivers and mountains far away,
And angels then seemed bending through the whiteness of the beams,
Whispering to weary mortals soft and sorrow-soothing dreams.
Oh! surely, eye of mortal never gazed on fairer scene,
Than there lay sweetly dreaming in that loveliness and sheen:--
But what is darkening yonder? and hark! that distant sound,
That comes like ghostly mutters faintly o'er the echoing ground.
And now that lightning flashes, like sulphureous light of Hell,
And now the winds come rushing o'er the far off wood and fell.
That cloud grows quickly larger, and the lightning flashing more--
Hark! Earth and Heaven are rocking in a consentaneous roar!
And heavily the deluge floods the hills, the vales, the streams,
And beasts howl out for terror and men start up from dreams.
Oh! 'tis a dreadful scene to-night, the dreadest e'er we saw,
The hardest heart that beateth now, in watery fear will thaw.
But lo! 'twas but a moment, like a wayward Beauty's wrath,
And the moon resumes in heaven, see! her all serener path--
And the clouds receding slowly rest upon the horizon round,
And the katydids and waters make the only living sound.
'Tis yet a night of loveliness, and fondly we may deem,
That Heaven and Earth are resting in the beauty of a Dream.
[The end]
James Avis Bartley's poem: Thunder Storm
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