THE VISION OF THE RUSSIAN FAMINE.
1.
Over vast areas of the night-ringed lists
And hiving tracts of life
Where death and birth,
Moving like storms upon a leafy wilderness,
Wage their perennial strife,
I see your wraiths drift heavenward like mists
That suck from earth
When the slant streamers of the sun caress
The frosted furrows and the steaming marshes,
And phantom phalanxes evolve on stealthy marches.
I see your wraiths drift heavenward like smoke
That swirls aloft
In ashen whorls
And tortuous trunks of vapour like the twisted oak,
And writhing torsos of pale flame,
As oft
When conflagration that no craft can tame
And running prairie-fires past control
Consume whole provinces and char a countryside;
Far and wide
The floating scrolls unroll
And swaying curtains lazily unfurl,
And o'er the blackened belt the drifting palls abide.
I see your wraiths tower up in dizzy rush.
So, when the tempests shroud
The heavens and the hurricane is loud
And ocean shouts
Between the silence of the depths and the sidereal hush,
The whirling pillars of the water-spouts
By harrying currents chased
Lift from the rolling waste
In traveling vortices that feed the clouds.
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