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 worlds 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 Natures 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.