Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SATAN. BOOK I. Earth's kingdoms and their glory.—Milton. Awake, ye thunders! let your living roar Exult around me, and a darkness shroud The air, as once again the world I greet, Here on this haughty mountain-head, where He Of old, now palaced in the Heaven of Heavens, The Virgin-born, by Prophets vision'd forth, Was tempted, and withstood me!— Is the Earth AppalFd, or agonizing in the wreck Of elements ?—like Spirits that are lost, Wailing and howling, sweep the orphan winds, While Nature trembles with prophetic fear, As though a Chaos were to crown the storm ! Lo! how it glooms, and what a fiery gash Deal the red lightnings through yon darken'd sky,— All echo with the chorus of her clouds ! And well Earth answers to the voice of Heaven. Hark to the crash of riven forest-boughs In yonder waste, the home of hurricanes, That catch the bowlings of the cavem'd brutes, And wing them onwards to Arabia's wild, O'ercanopied with flying waves of sand, Like a dread ocean whirling through the skies! But Thou, alone eternally sublime, Thou rolling mystery of Might and Power! Rocking the tempest on thy breast of waves, Or spread in breezy rapture to the Sun, Thou daring Ocean! that couldst deluge worlds, And yet rush on,—I hear thy swell of wrath In ceaseless thunder laughing at the winds Resoundingly, and from afar behold Thine armied billows, heaving as they roar, And the wild sea-foam shiver on the gales! Swell on, ye waves,—and whirlwinds, sweep along, Like the full breathing of Almighty ire, Whose sound is desolation!—where the sail Of yon lone vessel, as a shatter'd cloud, Is moving, let the surges mount on high Their huge magnificence, and lift their heads, And, like Titanic creatures, tempest-born, In life and fury m...