John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.
Poems of NatureStorm on Lake Asquam
A
On Carmel prophesying rain, began
To lift itself o’er wooded Cardigan,
Growing and blackening. Suddenly, a flaw
Down the long valley’s murmuring pines, and woke
The noon-dream of the sleeping lake, and broke
Its smooth steel mirror at the mountains’ feet.
Over the rough pine-bearded Asquam range;
A wraith of tempest, wonderful and strange,
From peak to peak the cloudy giant stepped.
Chocorua’s tall, defiant sentinel
Looked from his watch-tower; then the shadow fell,
And the wild rain-drift blotted out his form.
Weaving its light through slant-blown veils of rain,
Smiled on the trouble, as hope smiles on pain;
And, when the tumult and the strife were done,
Framing within his crescent’s tinted streak
A far-off picture of the Melvin peak,
Spent broken clouds the rainbow’s angel spanned.