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Title: Asterope
Author: William Johnson Cory [
More Titles by Cory]
Child of the summer cloud, upon thy birth,--
And thou art often born to die again,--
Follow loud groans, that shake the darkening earth,
And break the troublous sleep of guilty men.
Thou leapest from the thinner streams of air
To crags where vapours cling, where ocean frets;
No cave so deep, so cold, but thou art there,
Wrath in thy smile, and beauty in thy threats.
The molten sands beneath thy burning feet
Run, as thou runnest, into tubes of glass;
Old towers and trees, that proudly stood to meet
The whirlwind, let their fair invader pass.
The lone ship warring on the Indian sea
Bursts into splinters at thy sudden stroke;
Siberian mines fired long ago by thee
Still waste in helpless flame and barren smoke.
Such is thy dreadful pastime, Angel-queen,
When swooping headlong from the Armament
Thou spreadest fear along the village green,
Fear of the day when gravestones shall be rent.
And we that fear remember not, that thou,
Slewest the Theban maid, who vainly strove
To rival Juno, when the lover's vow
Was kept in wedlock by unwilling Jove.
And we forget, that when Oileus went
From the wronged virgin and the ruined fane,
When storms were howling round "Repent, Repent,"
Thy holy arrow pierced the spoiler's brain.
To perish all the proud! but chiefly he,
Who at the tramp of steeds and cymbal-beat
Proclaimed, "I thunder! Why not worship me?"
And thou didst slay him for his counterfeit.
[The end]
William Johnson Cory's poem: Asterope
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