Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 5.djvu/671

CANTO IV.] VII.

Forth from her bosom the young savage drew

A pine torch, strongly girded with gnatoo;

A plantain-leaf o'er all, the more to keep

Its latent sparkle from the sapping deep.

This mantle kept it dry; then from a nook

Of the same plantain-leaf a flint she took,

A few shrunk withered twigs, and from the blade

Of Torquil's knife struck fire, and thus arrayed

The grot with torchlight. Wide it was and high,

And showed a self-born Gothic canopy;

The arch upreared by Nature's architect,

The architrave some Earthquake might erect;

The buttress from some mountain's bosom hurled,

When the Poles crashed, and water was the world;

Or hardened from some earth-absorbing fire,

While yet the globe reeked from its funeral pyre;

The fretted pinnacle, the aisle, the nave,

Were there, all scooped by Darkness from her cave.

There, with a little tinge of phantasy,

Fantastic faces moped and mowed on high,

And then a mitre or a shrine would fix

The eye upon its seeming crucifix.

Thus Nature played with the stalactites,

And built herself a Chapel of the Seas.