Poems of Nature, Poems Subjective and Reminiscent and Religious Poems, Complete

STORM ON LAKE ASQUAM.

     A cloud, like that the old-time Hebrew saw
     On Carmel prophesying rain, began
     To lift itself o'er wooded Cardigan,
     Growing and blackening. Suddenly, a flaw

     Of chill wind menaced; then a strong blast beat
     Down the long valley's murmuring pines, and woke
     The noon-dream of the sleeping lake, and broke
     Its smooth steel mirror at the mountains' feet.

     Thunderous and vast, a fire-veined darkness swept
     Over the rough pine-bearded Asquam range;
     A wraith of tempest, wonderful and strange,
     From peak to peak the cloudy giant stepped.

     One moment, as if challenging the storm,
     Chocorua's tall, defiant sentinel
     Looked from his watch-tower; then the shadow fell,
     And the wild rain-drift blotted out his form.

     And over all the still unhidden sun,
     Weaving its light through slant-blown veils of rain,
     Smiled on the trouble, as hope smiles on pain;
     And, when the tumult and the strife were done,

     With one foot on the lake and one on land,
     Framing within his crescent's tinted streak
     A far-off picture of the Melvin peak,
     Spent broken clouds the rainbow's angel spanned.

     1882.