In paler sheetings, skirt the wide expanse.
Dread flaming from aloft, the cat'ract dire
Oft meets in middle space the nether fire.
Fierce, red, and ragged, shiv'ring in the air,
Athwart mid-darkness shoots the lengthen'd glare.
Wild glancing round, the feebler lightning plays;
The rifted centre pours the gen'ral blaze;
And from the warring clouds in fury driven,[A]
Red writhing falls the keen embodied bolt of heaven.

[Footnote A: In poetry we have only to do with appearances; and the
zig-zag lightning, commonly thought to be the thunder-bolt, is certainly
firm and embodied, compared to the ordinary lightning, which takes no
distinct shape at all.]

From the dark bowels of the burthen'd cloud
Dread swells the rolling peal, full, deep'ning, loud.
Wide ratt'ling claps the heavens scatter'd o'er,
In gathered strength lift the tremendous roar;
With weaning force it rumbles over head,
Then, growling, wears away to silence dread.
Now waking from afar in doubled might,
Slow rolling onward to the middle height;
Like crash of mighty mountains downward hurl'd,
Like the upbreaking of a wrecking world,
In dreadful majesty, th' explosion grand
Bursts wide, and awful, o'er the trembling land.
The lofty mountains echo back the roar,
Deep from afar rebounds earth's rocky shore;
All else existing in the senses bound