Omaha daily bee., 1896-06-13
STORMS DEPICTED In BOOKS
Hurricanes as Seen and Described by Novel
lists and Poets,
HAVOC PICTURED BY LITERARY ARTISTS
The storms In Shakespeare, "ChiIde
HAROLD "LuciIIe" and In Dickens'
works-Dcstruction Painted in
'The Last Days of Pompcii."

pleasure to entertain the reading world.
The scientific literature OF the air is enor-
nous In quantity and OF incalculable value
for scientific purposes, says the st. Louis
Globe-Democrat but 1t interests only
those who make aerial phenomena a spe-
cial study, and these are few compared
with the vast majority Of mankind who
know but little OF science, care nothing
about meteorology. but are able to see the
destruction wrought by the tornado and to
appreciate the utter helplessness of human
strength against the gale. In her calmer
moments nothing is more beautiful than
the quiet, but placid exercise of natural
power; but nothing is more awful than
nature reused to anger. The roar of the
tornado, driving before 1t fragments of
trees, houses, and even ponderous rocks;
the rocking of the earth when a tremor of
its apparently solid surface is going on;
the eruption of the volcano, when the un-
natural darkness is relieved only by flames
glowing like those of the pit, send terror
to the stoutest heart, for even he who feels
no fear when confronting the most desper-
ate of his species stands appalled, when the
elements go wild and earth, sea and sky
seem alike on the point of chaos and uni
versal ruin.
POLITICAL STORMS.
The sublimity OF the storms fury has
been a favorite subject with the poets of
every language. The noblest passages in
Isaiah and David are those which portray
the terrors OF the storm, when Jehovah
himself rode upon the blast, bowed the
heavens and came down upon the hurri-
cane. To the imaginative Hebrews the
tornado was the chariot of God, the clouds
were the veil which covered and concealed
His force, the winds were his messengers.
Later writer's have in vain sought to ex-
Gel the splendid imagery of Isaiah and
Psalms, but in the effort have given some
wonderful mixtures of the wrath of the aIo-
ments and of the impotence of man in the
presence of the hurricane. Always terrible,
a storm in the night, or the darkness which
often attends these terrible commissions of
nature, is awe-inspiring and as one hurri-
cane, in its main features, is much like an
other, the splendid description by Shakes
peare might have been written of the last
the greatest tornado:
Things that love night
Love not such nights as these; the wrath
Gallow the very wanderers of the dark,
And make them keep their caves; since I
was man,
Such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid
Such groans of roaring wind and rain, 1
Remember to have heard.
The Bard Of Avon has several terrible
storms in his wonderful plays, and one in
particular, full as it is of dreadful details,
might as easily answer for a volcanic storm
as for a cyclone. He says:
I have seen tempests where the scolding
winds
Have rived the knotty oaks; I have seen
The. AMBITIOUS ocean swell, and rage, and
foam,
To be exalted with the threatening clouds
Bnt never tin tonight, never Til now.
Did | go through a tempest dropping fire.
Byron was an earnest lover OF nature, even
in her most tempestuous moods. Every one
remembers the magnificent apostrophe to the
ocean. which indicates an almost idolatrous
admiration for the glories of the sea, in
storm as well as in calm. The same grand
poem in which is found the apostrophe con-
tains also evidence that he equally admired
a storm on land.
Far along,
From peak to peak, the rafting crags
Leaps the live thunder; not from one
But every mountain now hath found q
tongue,
And Jura answers from her misty
Back TO the Joyous Alps, who call to hei
aloud.
Scattered through the poems of Dryden,
IL Prior, Pope, Addison, Thompson, Tennyson
and Wordsworth are found numerous bits of
description which show how keenly these
masters of verse appreciated the grandeur of
the hurricane. Even Owen Meredith, in his
sentimental Lucille" has a vision of a storm
that is one of the most superb pieces of
word painting to be found in our language:
The storm is abroad in the mountains; he
fills
The crouched hollows and all the oracular
WIN ulCdu NOlttS Vi DOWtT. "A TOunu
OF wild echoes reluctantly rise from their
1mmemorial ambush and roll In the
wake
OF the cloud whose reflection leaves livid
the lake.
DICKENS STORMS.
1t would not be entirely correct to say
that the poets were hampered in their de-
s Sc ip by rhyme and meter, for in most
shackles. to hinder movement. but like
bracelets. for ornament. But 1t is no doubt
true that the prose writer's have given much
more vivid pictures Of the storm than have
the poets, and among the storm descriptions
of the novelists those of Dickens take very
high rank. The picture in David Copper
field of the storm in which Steerforth
persisted is in his best style:
at was a murky confusion-here and
there blotted with a color OF the smoke from
damp fuel-of flying clouds tossed up into
most remarkable heaps, suggesting greater
heights In the clouds than there were
depths below them to the bottom of the
deepest hollows in the earth, through which
the wild moon seemed to plunge headlong,
as IL, in dread disturbance of the laws OF
nature, she had lost her way and were
frightened. There had been a wind all day
and 1t was rising then with an extraordinary
great sound. In another hour II had much
increased and the sky was more overcast
and blew hard.
1.-THE tremendous sea itself, the agitation
of the binding wind. the flying stones and
bohhi biA u a"AAA hO'PSn Aits
AS the high watery walls came rolling in,
and at their highest tumbled into the surf,
they looked as II the least would engulf the
town. AS the r~eceding wave swept back
with a hoarse roar, 1t seemed to scoop out
deep caves In the beach, as If its purpose
were to undermine the earth. When some
white-headed pillows Numbered on. and
dashed themselves TO pieces before they
reached the land, every fragment of the
late whole seemed possessed by the full
might of it's wrath, rushing to be gathered
10 the composition OF another monster. I'm
sdulating hills were changed to valleys. un-
dulating valleys with a solitary storm-bird
sometimes Swimming through them were
lifted up to hills; masses OF water shiyered
and shook the beach with a booming sound;
every shape tumultuously rolled on as soon
as made TO change its shape and place and
beat another shape and place away; the
ideal shore on the horizon with its towers
and buildings rose and fell; the clouds flew
fast and thick; l seemed to see a rending
and upheaving of all nature"
LIGHTNING AND THUNDER.
In Martin Chuzzlewit' the same author
has a marvellous niece of imaginative writ