The aged sire, Now rising from his evening sacrifice, Amid his offspring stands, and lifts his eyes, Moist with a tear, to the bright bow: the fire Yet on the altar burns, whose trailing fume Goes slowly up, and marks the lucid cope Of the soft sky, where distant clouds hang still And beautiful.

So placid Evening steals After the lurid storm, like a sweet form 150 Of fairy following a perturbed shape Of giant terror, that in darkness strode.
Slow sinks the lord of day; the clustering clouds More ardent burn; confusion of rich hues, Crimson, and gold, and purple, bright, inlay Their varied edges; till before the eye, As their last lustre fades, small silver stars Succeed; and twinkling each in its own sphere, Thick as the frost's unnumbered spangles, strew The slowly-paling heavens.

Tired Nature seems 160 Like one who, struggling long for life, had beat The billows, and scarce gained a desert crag, O'er-spent, to sink to rest: the tranquil airs Whisper repose.

Now sunk in sleep reclines The Father of the world; then the sole moon Mounts high in shadowy beauty; every cloud Retires, as in the blue space she moves on Amid the fulgent orbs supreme, and looks The queen of heaven and earth.

Stilly the streams Retiring sound; midnight's high hollow vault 170 Faint echoes; stilly sound the distant streams.
When, hark! a strange and mingled wail, and cries As of ten thousand thousand perishing! A phantom, 'mid the shadows of the dead, Before the holy Patriarch, as he slept, Stood terrible:--Dark as a storm it stood Of thunder and of winds, like hollow seas Remote; meantime a voice was heard: Behold, Noah, the foe of thy weak race! my name Destruction, whom thy sons in yonder plains 180 Shall worship, and all grim, with mooned horns Paint fabling: when the flood from off the earth Before it swept the living multitudes, I rode amid the hurricane; I heard The universal shriek of all that lived.
In vain they climbed the rocky heights: I struck The adamantine mountains, and like dust They crumbled in the billowy foam.