Jephthah and Other Mysteries

LYRICAL AND DRAMATIC, 131 Fantastic cliffs of gnarléd stone, and saw The vivid lightning flare in purple robes Of flame along the ridge, and even heard Its terrible crackle, ’mid the sullen roar _ Of answering thunder. And the driven hail Beat on our faces, while we strove to fling Aloft the axe of forgéd steel, encased In glittering ice, and smite unceasingly On the unyielding slope of ice, as black As those most imminent ghosts of Satan’s frown That shut us out from heaven, while the snow Froze on our cheeks. And thus we gained the field Where precipice and overwhelming rock, Avalanche, crag, leap through the dazzled air To pile their mass in one Lethean plain Of undulations of rolled billowy snow Rent, seamed, and scarred with wound on jagged wound, Blue-rushing to the vague expanse below O’ th’ unknown secrecies of mountain song. Dragging behind us beautiful weary limbs, We turned snow-blinded eyes towards the pass That shot a jasper wall above the mist Into the lightning-kindled firmament, Behind whose battlements a shelter lay, Rude-built of pine, whose parents in the storm Of one vast avalanche were swept away Into the valley. Thither we hasted on, And there, as night stretched out a broken wing