Lyrics of the dawn / by Clinton Scollard [electronic text]

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!