The old man and his daughters are safely housed , and now the storm lets loose its fury . In every dwelling I perceive the faces of the chambermaids as they shut down the windows , excluding the impetuous shower and shrinking away from the quick fiery glare . The large drops descend with force upon the slated roofs and rise again in smoke . There is a rush and roar as of a river through the air , and muddy streams bubble majestically along the pavement , whirl their dusky foam into the kennel , and disappear beneath iron grates . Thus did Arethusa sink . I love not my station here aloft in the midst of the tumult which I am powerless to direct or quell , with the blue lightning wrinkling on my brow and the thunder muttering its first awful syllables in my ear . I will descend . Yet let me give another glance to the sea , where the foam breaks out in long white lines upon a broad expanse of blackness or boils up in far-distant points like snowy mountain-tops in the eddies of a flood ; and let me look once more at the green plain and little hills of the country , over which the giant of the storm is striding in robes of mist , and at the town whose obscured and desolate streets might beseem a city of the dead ; and , turning a single moment to the sky , now gloomy as an author 's prospects , I prepare to resume my station on lower earth . But stay ! A little speck of azure has widened in the western heavens ; the sunbeams find a passage and go rejoicing through the tempest , and on yonder darkest cloud , born like hallowed hopes of the glory of another world and the trouble and tears of this , brightens forth the rainbow . THE HOLLOW OF THE THREE HILLS . In those strange old times when fantastic dreams and madmen 's reveries were realized among the actual circumstances of life , two persons met together at an appointed hour and place . One was a lady graceful in form and fair of feature , though pale and troubled and smitten with an untimely blight in what should have been the fullest bloom of her years ; the other was an ancient and meanly-dressed woman of ill-favored aspect , and so withered , shrunken and decrepit that even the space since she began to decay must have exceeded the ordinary term of human existence . In the spot where they encountered no mortal could observe them . Three little hills stood near each other , and down in the midst of them sunk a hollow basin almost mathematically circular , two or three hundred feet in breadth and of such depth that a stately cedar might but just be visible above the sides . Dwarf pines were numerous upon the hills and partly fringed the outer verge of the intermediate hollow , within which there was nothing but the brown grass of October and here and there a tree-trunk that had fallen long ago and lay mouldering with no green successor from its roots . One of these masses of decaying wood , formerly a majestic oak , rested close beside a pool of green and sluggish water at the bottom of the basin . Such scenes as this -LRB- so gray tradition tells -RRB- were once the resort of a power of evil and his plighted subjects , and here at midnight or on the dim verge of evening they were said to stand round the mantling pool disturbing its putrid waters in the performance of an impious baptismal rite . The chill beauty of an autumnal sunset was now gilding the three hill-tops , whence a paler tint stole down their sides into the hollow . `` Here is our pleasant meeting come to pass , '' said the aged crone , `` according as thou hast desired .
Say quickly what thou wouldst have of me , for there is but a short XXXXX that we may tarry here . ''
azure first gilding hour lightning mountain-tops sunbeams tree-trunk tumult years