Sunrise on Sinai

Back rolled the billows of the gulfs of night,
But still the silence circled us. No sound
Swept upward from the valleys. Opal, gold,
Then vermeil burned the sky-line, and the sun
Burst, with its blinding glory, from a cloud.
And still the silence!—All the vasts of time
Since Moses stood alone upon the mount
Were as a moment. Face to face were we
With the Divine, with the Inscrutable,
And in that awesome, heavenly quietude,
Though no voice spake, heard His eternal word.

Like islands in an ocean vague and weird
Around us poised, pyramidal, the peaks;
The fleecy cloud-waves, palpitant like wings,
Rippled in harmonies of pearl and rose.
Then came a sudden wafture from the west,
And 'twixt twin crests that royally upreared
The shimmering vapors pressed and poured and plunged
And seethed like an aerial Niagara,—
Leaped adown mighty voids that gloomed and gaped,
Shattered on hidden bastions, and in wreaths,
Ethereal shapes, and forms attenuate,
Returned and swirled about us like a host
Of visitants celestial, and were gone.

Again the sun in majesty! and now
Earth with its features multiform, and far
Below, with sapphire scintillant, the sea!