The torch-bearers v.2

The book of earth

Title: The book of earth Author: Alfred Noyes Release Date: May 20, 2022 [EBook #68134] Language: English Original Publication: US: , United States: Frederick A. Stokes,1925. Credits: Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) WORKS OF ALFRED NOYES Collected Poems3 Vols. The Lord of Misrule A Belgian Christmas Eve The Wine-Press Walking ShadowsProse Tales of the Mermaid Tavern Sherwood The Enchanted Island and Other Poems Drake: An English Epic Poems The Flower of Old Japan The Golden Hynde The New Morning The Torch-Bearers Watchers of the Sky The Book of Earth Let the stars fade. Open the Book of Earth. Out of the Painted Desert, in broad noon, Walking through pine-clad bluffs, in an air like wine, I came to the dreadful brink. I saw, with a swimming brain, the solid earth Splitting apart, into two hemispheres, Cleft, as though by the axe of an angry god. On the brink of the Grand Canyon, Over that reeling gulf of amethyst shadows, From the edge of one sundered hemisphere I looked down, Down from abyss to abyss,[2] Into the dreadful heart of the old earth dreaming Like a slaked furnace of her far beginnings, The inhuman ages, alien as the moon, ons unborn, and the unimagined end. There, on the terrible brink, against the sky, I saw a black speck on a boulder jutting Over a hundred forests that dropped and dropped Down to a tangle of red precipitous gorges That dropped again and dropped, endlessly down. A mile away, or ten, on its jutting rock, The black speck moved. In that dry diamond light It seemed so near me that my hand could touch it. It stirred like a midge, cleaning its wings in the sun. All measure was lost. It brokeinto five black dots. I looked, through the glass, and saw that these were men.[3] Beyond them, round them, under them, swam the abyss Endlessly on. Far down, as a cloud sailed over, A sun-shaft struck, between forests and sandstone cliffs, Down, endlessly down, to the naked and dusky granite, Crystalline granite that still seemed to glow With smouldering colours of those buried fires Which formed it, long ago, in earths deep womb. And there, so far below that not a sound, Even in that desert air, rose from its bed, I saw the thin green thread of the Colorado, The dragon of rivers, dwarfed to a vein of jade, The Colorado that, out of the Rocky Mountains, For fifteen hundred miles of glory and thunder, Rolls to the broad Pacific. From Flaming Gorge,[4] Through the Grand Canyon with its monstrous chain Of subject canyons, the green river flows, Linking them all together in one vast gulch, But christening it, at each earth-cleaving turn, With names like pictures, for six hundred miles: Black Canyon, where it rushes in opal foam; Red Canyon, where it sleeks to jade again And slides through quartz, three thousand feet below; Split-Mountain Canyon, with its cottonwood trees; And, opening out of this, Whirlpool Ravine, Where the wild rapids wash the gleaming walls With rainbows, for nine miles of mist and fire; Kingfisher Canyon, gorgeous as the plumes Of its wingd denizens, glistening with all hues; Glen Canyon, where the Cave of Music rang Long since, with the discoverers desert-song; Vermilion Cliffs, like sunset clouds congealed[5] To solid crags; the Valley of Surprise Where blind walls open, into a Titan pass; Labyrinth Canyon, and the Valley of Echoes; Cataract Canyon, rolling boulders down In floods of emerald thunder; Gunnisons Valley Crossed, once, by the forgotten Spanish Trail; Then, for a hundred miles, Desolation Canyon, Savagely pinnacled, strange as the lost road Of Death, cleaving a long deserted world; Gray Canyon next; then Marble Canyon, stained With iron-rust above, but brightly veined As Parian, where the wave had sculptured it; Then deep Still-water. And all these conjunct In one huge chasm, were but the towering gates And dim approaches to the august abyss That opened here,one sempiternal page Baring those awful hieroglyphs of stone, Seven systems, and seven ages, darkly scrolled[6] In the deep Book of Earth. Across the gulf I looked to that vast coast opposed, whose crests Of raw rough amethyst, over the Canyon, flamed, A league away, or ten. No eye could tell. All measure was lost. The tallest pine was a feather Under my feet, in that ocean of violet gloom. Then, with a dizzying brain, I saw below me, A little way out, a tiny shape, like a gnat Flying and spinning,now like a gilded grain Of dust in a shaft of light, now sharp and black Over a blood-red sandstone precipice. Look! The Indian guide thrust out a lean dark hand That hid a hundred forests, and pointed to it, Muttering low, Big Eagle! All that day, Riding along the brink, we found no end. Still, on the right, the pageant of the Abyss[7] Unfolded. There gigantic walls of rock, Sheer as the worlds end, seemed to float in air Over the hollow of space, and change their forms Like soft blue wood-smoke, with each change of light. Here massed red boulders, over the Angel Trail Darkened to thunder, or like a sunset burned. Here, while the mind reeled from the imagined plunge, Tall amethystine towers, dark Matterhorns, Rose out of shadowy nothingness to crown Their mighty heads with morning. Here, wild crags Black and abrupt, over the swimming dimness Of coloured mist, and under the moving clouds, Themselves appeared to move, stately and slow As the moon moves, with an invisible pace, Or darkling planets, quietly onward steal Through their immense dominion. There, far down,[8] A phantom sword, a search-beam of the sun, Glanced upon purple pyramids, and set One facet aflame in each, the rest in gloom; While from their own deep chasms of shadow, that seemed Small inch-wide rings of darkness round them, rose Tabular foothills, mesas, hard and bright, Bevelled and flat, like gems; or, softly bloomed Like alabaster, stained with lucid wine; Then slowly changed, under the changing clouds, Where the light sharpened, into monstrous tombs Of trap-rock, hornblende, greenstone and basalt. There,under isles of pine, washed round with mist, Dark isles that seemed to sail through heaven, and cliffs That towered like Teneriffe,far, far below,[9] Striving to link those huge dissolving steeps, Gigantic causeways drowned or swam in vain, Column on column, arch on broken arch, Groping and winding, like the foundered spans Of lost Atlantis, under the weltering deep. For, over them, the abysmal tides of air, Inconstant as the colours of the sea, From amethyst into wreathing opal flowed, Ebbed into rose through grey, then melted all In universal amethyst again. There, wild cathedrals, with light-splintering spires, Shone like a dream in the Eternal mind And changed as earth and sea and heaven must change. Over them soared a promontory, black As night, but in the deepening gulf beyond, Far down in that vast hollow of violet air, Winding between the huge Plutonian walls, The semblance of a ruined city lay. Dungeons flung wide, and palaces brought low,[10] Altars and temples, wrecked and overthrown, Gigantic stairs that climbed into the light And found no hope, and ended in the void: It burned and darkened, a city of porphyry, Paved with obsidian, walled with serpentine, Beautiful, desolate, stricken as by strange gods Who, long ago, from cloudy summits, flung Boulder on mountainous boulder of blood-red marl Into a gulf so deep that, when they fell, The soft wine-tinted mists closed over them Like ocean, and the Indian heard no sound. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 68134
Author: Noyes, Alfred
Release Date: May 20, 2022
Format: eBook
Language: English
Publisher: Frederick A. Stokes
Publication Date: 1925
Publisher Country: United States