Mountain Summit

On the occasion of a cloud inversion:

I stood upon a rocky shore
Looking on a quilted sea
High above the cotton clouds
In rare tranquillity
From where inverted realm of mine
Seemed equanimity
With earth like desolated moon
And cloud like foaming sea.

'A blighted star', he said, not I
On this volcanic fantasy
'Mongst tales of crumbling spires
And fairy-tower princesses
In a land of castlements
Of molten turrets spewing forth
My freedom there I long surveyed
Above the dungeon earth.

And all along the ramparts stood
Sentries, stopped and stared
Far from ignoble strife, a crowd
Divested all its cares
Like insects on the battlements
From Scotland's granite hewn
Their instincts followed to the morrow
O'er 'vapourated paths of doom.

Beneath the flag and angel's crest
A cloudy moat sank to abyss
In a valley aptly dammed
By ridges strewn with ragged teeth
And smoke behind that dam did churn
With every plunge of angels' spear
Till rose and rose then overflowed
A waterfall I could not hear.

And gazing on the cotton sea
From high upon my castle beach
These waves so soft and silenting
Broke at my humbling feet
While a myriad of island peaks
Floated loyal in the sun
And there I watched them sail by
Counting all of them.