While The Billy BoilsSearch(Written during the fearful Trevessa storm.)
On nights like these, when breezes bitter blowAnd all the wrath of God comes down in rain,When crowded clouds hang pendulously lowAnd hell’s battalions march the ungoverned main,The puny human crouching in his cotShuts himself in from all the storm and strife,Knowing no tithe of mankind’s cruel lot,Where Death, assassin Death, leaps after Life,The ocean gales gigantic shake the shores;The fierce tornadoes trample on the trees;Man to his Maker all his soul outpoursOn nights like these!
On nights like these we think of sinking ships,Of sailors drowned, of landsmen lost to life;The brave bruised liner that to silence slips,Cutting the ooze as cuts a colossal knife.And to the warring waters, now her graveRush rescue boats, steam-speeded to her pray’r;But over where she lies the waters laveThe few poor fragments floating lonely there,Some gulls affrighted where she lately swirledA ghostly death-cry beating on the breeze;The wail of orphans echoes round the worldOn nights like these!
On nights like these we think of dear ones dead,Lying so cold beneath the showered sand,The sombre cypress dripping overhead,A pall of darkness o’er that lifeless land.When suns are shining and the skies are blue,And God’s own glory-light illumes the way,We see the rose that blooms amid the rue;We kneel to pluck the lilies where they stray.But when the darkness comes and we depart,Though knowing they are clustered round His knees;O, but the hopeless longing in the heart —On nights like these!
On nights like these we think of kings accurst,Kaisers and such who woke the world to war,Blasphemous brutes whose tyrant hearts have nursedAmbitious madness in their cankered core.When they by say or sign had dug a graveFor millions lying mangled where they fell,The wild, wild voices of the land and waveBring to them all the horrors of a hell.The thunders of the sky, the shouting storms,Recall the dead that sleep beneath the seas;These Cains see Death in all its fearful forms —On nights like these!
Stand you with me upon some mighty hillWhen the Great Hand strikes on the stormy chords;Watch where the rain-clouds all their fullness spill;Hear you the thunder of the over-lords.Look where the lightning leaps and gashes deepThe bosom of the timid, trembling earth;Hear you the tumult where the surges sweepAnd great ships groan as ones of human birth.These are the tokens of Almighty Power,Whose breaths can burn, whose blizzards blast and freeze.God shows Himself to man in every hour —On nights like these!