Huge bodies of vapour—a storm in each—were hurrying over a sky, dashed alike with the hues of the tempest and the morning; some of the vapours were of inky blackness, others spread like a scroll of royal purple; some undulated with the light struggling through, others were of transparent whiteness; but those upon the east were of a deep crimson—and the round, red sun had just mounted above an enormous old cedar. Red hues were cast upon everything; even the lilies blushed, and the waters of the little fountain were like melted rubies...

Our spirits leaped, hosannas of destruction,
Like desert lilies forked with tongues of fire.

The groan of the people spread over the hills; it was like the thunder of night, when the cloud bursts on Cona; and a thousand ghosts shriek at once on the hollow wind.

And elm-trees, massed like ostrich feather plumes,
Are streaked and shot with fire.

The love-diffusing [Lord] will separate us. The land of worldly weather, A wind will melt the trees: There will pass away every tranquillity When the mountains are burnt. There will be again inhabitants With horns before kings; The mighty One will send them, Sea, and land, and lake. There will be again a trembling terror, And a moving of the earth, And above every field, And ashes the rocks will be; With violent exertion, concealment, And burning of lake.

This house has been far out at sea all night, The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills, Winds stampeding the fields under the window Floundering black astride and blinding wet <p> Till day rose; then under an orange sky The hills had new places, and wind wielded Blade-light, luminous black and emerald, Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.

Wind howled throught the night, carrying the scent that would change the world.

Fiery the Angels rose, and as they rose deep thunder roll'd
Around their shores: indignant burning with the fires of Orc.

. . . while daisies burn like stars on the darkened hill.

And lo! the universal air
Seemed lit with ghastly flame;
Ten thousand thousand dreadful eyes
Were looking down in blame.

One may picture, too, the sudden shifting of the attention, the swiftly spreading coils and bellyings of that blackness advancing headlong, towering heavenward, turning the twilight to a palpable darkness, a strange and horrible antagonist of vapour striding upon its victims, men and horses near it seen dimly, running, shrieking, falling headlong, shouts of dismay, the guns suddenly abandoned, men choking and writhing on the ground, and the swift broadening-out of the opaque cone of smoke. And then night and extinction – nothing but a silent mass of impenetrable vapour hiding its dead.

The wind fled into the heights, shrieking mournfully. A washed-out, cold sun shot its arrows down upon that barren hill.