Sonnet
What art thou, Mighty One! and where thy seat?
Thou broodest on the calm that cheers the lands.
And thou dost bear within thine awful hands
The rolling thunders and the lightnings fleet.
Stern on thy dark-wrought car of cloud and wind,
Thou guidest the northern storm at night’s dead noon,
Or, on the red wing of the fierce monsoon,
Disturb’st the sleeping giant of the Ind.
In the drear silence of the polar span
Dost thou repose? or in the solitude
Of sultry tracts, where the lone caravan
Hears nightly howl the tiger’s hungry brood?
Vain thought! the confines of his throne to trace,
Who glows through all the fields of boundless space.