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, beneathThe ponderous, unimaginable strain and stress,Groan shuddering as in pangs of worldwide death;While their long summits stretched against the skyRough-edged with trackless forests, to the eyeA double outline take (as when you pressThe eyeball); and the beaten roads belowIn 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 reelsAghast, as if the heavy chariot-wheelsOf God in very truth were thundering byIn too intolerable majesty:—Then he who for the first time feels the shock,Unconscious of its source, unguessing whenceComes flying o’er him, with oppressive senseOf irresistible Omnipotence,That boundless, strange, o’erwhelming influence,At once remote and in his inmost heart—Is troubled most, that, with his staggering startAll 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 hourOur Maiden.