Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 2.djvu/424

382 LXIX.

The roar of waters!—from the headlong height

Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice;

The fall of waters! rapid as the light

The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss;

The Hell of Waters! where they howl and hiss,

And boil in endless torture; while the sweat

Of their great agony, wrung out from this

Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet

That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set,

LXX.

And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again

Returns in an unceasing shower, which round,

With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain,

Is an eternal April to the ground,

Making it all one emerald:—how profound

The gulf! and how the Giant Element

From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound,

Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent

With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful vent

LXXI.

To the broad column which rolls on, and shows

More like the fountain of an infant sea