OUR blue sierras shone serene, sublime, <br />When ghostly shapes came crowding up the air, <br />Shadowing the landscape with some vast despair; <br />And all was changed as in weird pantomime, <br />Transfigured into vague, fantastic form <br />By that tremendous carnival of storm. <br />Pilgrim processions of bowed trees that climb <br />To sacred summits, in the clashing hail <br />Shuddered like flagellants beneath the flail. <br />Most gracious hills, in that tempestuous time, <br />Went wild as angered bulls, with bellowing cry <br />And goring horns that strove to charge the sky. <br />Masses of rock, long gnawed by stealthy rime, <br />With sudden roar that made our bravest blanch, <br />Came volleying down in fatal avalanche. <br />All nature seemed convulsed in some fierce crime, <br />And then a rainbow, and behold! the sun <br />Went comforting the harebells one by one; <br />And all was still save for the vesper chime <br />From far, faint belfry bathed in creamy light, <br />And the soft footfalls of the coming night.<br /><br />Katharine Lee Bates<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-mountain-storm/
