New Zealand Verse/Description of an Earthquake
XIX.
Description of an Earthquake.
As through the land when some dread Earthquake thrills,
Shaking the hidden bases of the hills;
Their grating adamantine depths, beneath
The ponderous, unimaginable strain and stress,
Groan shuddering as in pangs of worldwide death;
While their long summits stretched against the sky
Rough-edged with trackless forests, to the eye
A double outline take (as when you press
The eyeball); and the beaten roads below
In yellow undulations roll and flow;
And in broad swamps the serried flax-blades lithe,
Convulsed and tortured, rattling, toss and writhe,
As through them sweeps the swift tremendous throe:
Beasts howling run, or trembling, stand and stare,
And birds, as the huge tree-tops swing and rock,
Plunge scared into the more reliable air:—
All Nature wrung with spasm, affrighted reels
Aghast, as if the heavy chariot-wheels
Of God in very truth were thundering by
In too intolerable majesty:—
Then he who for the first time feels the shock,
Unconscious of its source, unguessing whence
Comes flying o’er him, with oppressive sense
Of irresistible Omnipotence,
That boundless, strange, o’erwhelming influence,
At once remote and in his inmost heart—
Is troubled most, that, with his staggering start
All the convictions from his birth upgrown,
And customary confidence, o’erthrown,
In Earth’s eternal steadfastness, are gone:
Even such a tumult smote in that wild hour
Our Maiden.
Shaking the hidden bases of the hills;
Their grating adamantine depths, beneath
The ponderous, unimaginable strain and stress,
Groan shuddering as in pangs of worldwide death;
While their long summits stretched against the sky
Rough-edged with trackless forests, to the eye
A double outline take (as when you press
The eyeball); and the beaten roads below
In yellow undulations roll and flow;
And in broad swamps the serried flax-blades lithe,
Convulsed and tortured, rattling, toss and writhe,
As through them sweeps the swift tremendous throe:
Beasts howling run, or trembling, stand and stare,
And birds, as the huge tree-tops swing and rock,
Plunge scared into the more reliable air:—
All Nature wrung with spasm, affrighted reels
Aghast, as if the heavy chariot-wheels
Of God in very truth were thundering by
In too intolerable majesty:—
Then he who for the first time feels the shock,
Unconscious of its source, unguessing whence
Comes flying o’er him, with oppressive sense
Of irresistible Omnipotence,
That boundless, strange, o’erwhelming influence,
At once remote and in his inmost heart—
Is troubled most, that, with his staggering start
All the convictions from his birth upgrown,
And customary confidence, o’erthrown,
In Earth’s eternal steadfastness, are gone:
Even such a tumult smote in that wild hour
Our Maiden.