THOU who wouldst see the lovely and the wild
Mingled
in harmony on Nature's face,
Ascend our rocky mountains.
Let thy foot
Fail not with weariness, for on their tops
The beauty and the majesty of earth,
Spread wide beneath,
shall make thee to forget
The steep and toilsome way.
There, as thou stand'st,
The haunts of men below thee,
and around
The mountain summits, thy expanding heart
Shall feel a kindred with that loftier world
To which
thou art translated, and partake
The enlargement of thy
vision. Thou shalt look
Upon the green and rolling forest
tops,
And down into the secrets of the glens,
And
streams, that with their bordering thickets strive
To
hide their windings. Thou shalt gaze, at once,
Here on
white villages, and tilth, and herds,
And swarming roads,
and there on solitudes
That only hear the torrent, and
the wind,
And eagle's shriek. There is a precipice
That seems a fragment of some mighty wall,
Built by the
hand that fashioned the old world,
To separate its
nations, and thrown down
When the flood drowned them. To
the north, a path
Conducts you up the narrow battlement.
Steep is the western side, shaggy and wild
With mossy
trees, and pinnacles of flint,
And many a hanging crag.
But, to the east,
Sheer to the vale go down the bare old
cliffs,�
Huge pillars, that in middle heaven upbear
Their weather-beaten capitals, here dark
With moss, the
growth of centuries, and there
Of chalky whiteness where
the thunderbolt
Has splintered them. It is a fearful
thing
To stand upon the beetling verge, and see
Where
storm and lightning, from that huge gray wall,
Have
tumbled down vast blocks, and at the base
Dashed them in
fragments, and to lay thine ear
Over the dizzy depth, and
hear the sound
Of winds, that struggle with the woods
below,
Come up like ocean murmurs. But the scene
Is
lovely round; a beautiful river there
Wanders amid the
fresh and fertile meads,
The paradise he made unto
himself,
Mining the soil for ages. On each side
The
fields swell upward to the hills; beyond,
Above the
hills, in the blue distance, rise
The mountain columns
with which earth props heaven. |
