Now from the dewy groves the joyful birds
In carol-concert sang their matin songs
Softly and sweetly--full of prayer and praise.
Then silver-chiming, solemn-voiced bells
Rung out their music on the morning air,
And Lisbon gathered to the festival
In chapel and cathedral. Choral hymns
And psalms of sea-toned organs mingling rose
With sweetest incense floating up to heaven,
Bearing the praises of the multitudes;
And all was holy peace and holy happiness.
A rumbling of deep thunders in the deep;
The vast sea shuddered and the mountains groaned;
Up-heaved the solid earth--the nether rocks
Burst--and the sea--the earth--the echoing heavens
Thundered infernal ruin. On their knees
The trembling multitudes received the shock,
And dumb with sudden terror bowed their heads
To toppling spire and plunging wall and dome.
So shook the mighty North the sudden roar
Of Treason thundering on the April air--
An earthquake shock that jarred the granite hills
And westward rolled against th' eternal walls
Rock-built Titanic--for a moment shook:
Uprose a giant and with iron hands
Grasped his huge hammer, claspt his belt of steel,
And o'er the Midgard-monster mighty Thor
Loomed for the combat.
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