Round about me, in the dark, were imps that laughed and whispered
together, and mocked me amid the leaves: "Who is the madman that stands upon a lonely hill at midnight,
bareheaded, half clad, and hungers for the storm? Peter Vibart!
Peter Vibart! Who is he that, having eyes, sees not, and having
ears, hears not? Peter Vibart! Peter Vibart! Blow, Wind, and
buffet him! Flame, O Lightning, that he may see! Roar, O
Thunder, that he may hear and know!"
Upon the stillness came a rustling, loud and ever louder, drowning
all else, for the giant was awake at last, and stretching himself;
and now, up he sprang with a sudden bellow, and, gathering himself
together, swept up towards me through the swaying treetops,
pelting me with broken twigs and flying leaves, and filling the
air with the tumult of his coming.
Oh, the wind!--the bellowing, giant wind! On he came, exulting,
whistling through my hair, stopping my breath, roaring in my ears
his savage, wild halloo! And, as if in answer, forth from the
inky heaven burst a jagged, blinding flame, that zigzagged down
among the tossing trees, and vanished with a roaring thunder-clap
that seemed to stun all things to silence. But not for long, for
in the darkness came the wind again--fiercer, wilder than before,
shrieking a defiance. The thunder crashed above me, and the
lightning quivered in the air about me, till my eyes ached with
the swift transitions from pitch darkness to dazzling light--light
in which distant objects started out clear and well defined, only
to be lost again in a swirl of blackness. And now came rain--a
sudden, hissing downpour, long threads of scintillating fire where
the lightning caught it--rain that wetted me through and through.
The storm was at its height, and, as I listened, rain and wind
and thunder became merged and blended into awful music--a
symphony of Life and Death played by the hands of God; and I was
an atom--a grain of dust an insect, to be crushed by God's little
finger. And yet needs must this insect still think upon its
little self for half drowned, deafened, blind, and half stunned
though I was, still the voice within me cried: "Why? Why? Why?"
Why was I here instead of lying soft and sheltered, and sleeping
the blessed sleep of tired humanity? Why was I here, with death
about me--and why must I think, and think, and think of Her?
The whole breadth of heaven seemed torn asunder--blue flame
crackled in the air; it ran hissing along the ground; then
--blackness, and a thunderclap that shook the very hill beneath
me, and I was down upon my knees, with the swish of the rain
about me.