The fickle sun that had the earth caress'd
And quickened all her amorous desire,
And brought fresh roses to adorn her breast,
Now spurned her in the madness of his ire;
A haze of heat half hid the mountain's crest;
The very river seemed of liquid fire;
The air was flame, the town a stifling pale,
And all the land was like a Hinnom's Vale.
I thought of Hagar and what she endured,
Faint in the desert, driv'n from Sara's sight;
Of angry Jonah underneath his gourd,
Grown in a night and withered in a night;
Of the sun-stricken lad Elisha cured
For the good, hospitable Shunammite;
And of the fiery furnace made to glow
For Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.
I called to mind Boccaccio's tale of her
Left on a sun-scorched roof, and like to die;
And I beheld the Ancient Mariner
Becalmed beneath his hot and copper sky;
And heard a long-forgotten traveller
Speak from a page which made my childhood sigh,
And tell of horrid climes by God accurst,
And men and horses perishing of thirst.
And to myself I said, Is this the land
Where freezing cold claims sometimes half the year?
Is this the region where the streams are spanned
With floors of azure crystal, hard and clear,
And all the snow-enveloped mountains stand
Like hoary chiefs, majestic and austere?
Was't here we saw so late King Winter stern?
And will he shortly here again return?