VISION FOURTH

That father died neglected, and in death
With struggling love were mingled bitter thoughts—
A Father's Curse.
This, ere his head went down into the grave,
Dug in a corner where meek strangers lie,
Had upward sprung, a messenger succinct,
To trouble all the crystal range of Heaven,
To call on Hell, to post o'er seas and lands,
Nature to challenge in her last domain,
Not to let pass the accursed.
There came a voice—it cried,
“The storms are ready.”
Forth flew into mid air that Father's form,
No longer mean, a potentate of wrath,
To rule the elements and set them on.

He called the Storms—they came;
He pointed to his son:
There stood that son—no wife was with him now,
No children pleaded for his naked head—
Upon a broken hill, abrupt and strange,
Under a sky which darkened to a twilight;
A huddled world of woods and waters crushed,
Hung tumbling round him, earthquake-torn and jammed
From Nature's difficult throes: cut off he stood
From ways of men, from mercy, and from help,
With chasms and ramparts inaccessible.
The tree-tops streaming toward his outcast head,
Showed that the levelled winds smote sore on him;
Gaunt rampant monsters, half-drawn from the woods,
Roared at him glaring; downward on his eyes
The haggard vulture was in act to swoop;
Rains plashed on him; hail hit him; darting down,
The flaming forks blue quivered round him keen,
And many thunders lifted up their voice:
All Nature was against him.
Out leapt a bolt,
And split the mount beneath his sinking feet.
O'er him his Father's form burnt fiercely red,
Nearer and nearer still,
Dislimned and fused into one sheeted blaze.
From out it fell a bloody drizzled shower,
Rained on that bad son's head descending fast,
Terror thereon aghast—he's down! he's gone!
Darkness has swallowed up the scene convulsed.