And now the pouring surges, vast and smooth,
     Grew weary of restraint, and heaved themselves
     Headlong beneath him, breaking at his feet
     With wild importunate cries and angry wail;
     Like crowds that shout for bread and hunger more. 
     And now the surface of their rolling backs
     Was ridged with foam-topt furrows, rising high
     And dashing wildly, like to fiery steeds,
     Fresh from the Thracian or Thessalian plains,
     High-blooded mares just tempering to the bit,
     Whose manes at full-speed stream upon the winds,
     And in whose delicate nostrils when the gust
     Breathes of their native plains, they ramp and rear,
     Frothing the curb, and bounding from the earth,
     As though the Sun-god’s chariot alone
     Were fit to follow in their flashing track. 
     Anon with gathering stature to the height
     Of those colossal giants, doomed long since
     To torturous grief and penance, that assailed
     The sky-throned courts of Zeus, and climbing, dared
     For once in a world the Olympic wrath, and braved
     The electric spirit which from his clenching hand
     Pierces the dark-veined earth, and with a touch
     Is death to mortals, fearfully they grew! 
     And with like purpose of audacity
     Threatened Titanic fury to the God. 
     Such was the agitation of the sea
     Beneath Poseidon’s thought-revolving brows,
     Storming for signal.  But no signal came. 
     And as when men, who congregate to hear
     Some proclamation from the regal fount,
     With eager questioning and anxious phrase
     Betray the expectation of their hearts,
     Till after many hours of fretful sloth,
     Weary with much delay, they hold discourse
     In sullen groups and cloudy masses, stirred
     With rage irresolute and whispering plot,
     Known more by indication than by word,
     And understood alone by those whose minds
     Participate;—­even so the restless waves
     Began to lose all sense of servitude,
     And worked with rebel passions, bursting, now
     To right, and now to left, but evermore
     Subdued with influence, and controlled with dread
     Of that inviolate Authority. 
     Then, swiftly as he mused, the impetuous God
     Seized on the pausing reins, his coursers plunged,
     His brows resumed the grandeur of their ire;
     Throughout his vast divinity the deeps
     Concurrent thrilled with action, and away,
     As sweeps a thunder-cloud across the sky
     In harvest-time, preluded by dull blasts;
     Or some black-visaged whirlwind, whose wide folds
     Rush, wrestling on with all ’twixt heaven and earth,
     Darkling he hurried, and his distant voice,
     Not softened by delay, was heard in tones
     Distinctly terrible, still following up