CROSSING THE ALLEGHANIES.
One endless chaos spread before his eyes,
No vestige left of earth or azure skies,
A boundless nothingness reign'd everywhere,
Hid the green fields and silent all the air.
As look'd the traveller for the world below,
The lively morning breeze began to blow,
The magic curtain roll'd in mists away,
And a gay landscape laugh'd upon the day.
As light the fleeting vapours upward glide,
Like sheeted spectres on the mountain side,
New objects open to his wondering view
Of various form, and combinations new.
A rocky precipice, a waving wood,
Deep winding dell, and foaming mountain flood,
Each after each, with coy and sweet delay,
Broke on his sight, as at young dawn of day,
Bounded afar by peak aspiring bold,
Like giant capt with helm of burnish'd gold.
So when the wandering grandsire of our race
On Ararat had found a resting place,
At first a shoreless ocean met his eye,
Mingling on every side with one blue sky;
But as the waters, every passing day,
Sunk in the earth or roll'd in mists away,
Gradual, the lofty hills, like islands, peep
From the rough bosom of the boundless deep,
Then the round hillocks, and the meadows green,
Each after each, in freshen'd bloom are seen,
Till, at the last, a fair and finish'd whole
Combined to win the gazing patriarch's soul.
Yet oft he look'd, I ween, with anxious eye,
In lingering hope somewhere, perchance, to spy,
Within the silent world, some living thing,
Crawling on earth, or moving on the wing,
Or man, or beast-alas! was neither there,
Nothing that breathed of life in earth or air;
'Twas a vast silent mansion rich and gay, Whose occupant was drown'd the other day;
A church-yard, where the gayest flowers oft bloom
Amid the melancholy of the tomb;
A charnel house, where all the human race
Had piled their bones in one wide resting place;
Sadly he turn'd from such a sight of wo,
And sadly sought the lifeless world below.
How beauteous o'er the blue expanse
Pencilling their shadows on the evening sky,
The gathering clouds with gauze-wings unfold
Their heaven wove tapestry:
Veiling in mist the dim and wearied sun,
Ere yet the drapery of his couch is won!
Behold! behold them now!
Tossing their gold-edged tresses on the breeze! Gliding like angels o'er the star-gemmed floor To heavenly symphonies!
While distant seen, like hope to faith's clear view, Sleeps in calm splendour the cerulean blue!
Ere yet imagination's wand
Has traced the vision on the teeming brain, The fleeting pageant floats in mist, away
Beyond the billowy main :
But forms more beauteous wing again their flight, While eve reposes on the lap of night.
Yon castellated tower
As proudly cuts its turrets on the sky, As if the portals of its airy halls
Blazoned with heraldry!
And who shall say, but in its chambers glide
Pale courtier's shadows-disembodied pride?
The mimic ship unfolds
Her swelling canvass on the airy main;
And horsemen sweep in graceful circles o'er
Th' etherial plain :
While forms of light unknown to mortals here,
People in myriads the celestial sphere!
And many-coloured flowers,
Changing their hues with every passing breeze,
Crown the far summits of the mountain steeps;
The shadowy trees
Fling their gigantic branches wide and far,
Dimming the lustre of full many a star.
How oft in childhood's hour
I've watched the cloudlets pale the evening beam,
While the bright day-god quenched his waning fires
In ocean, pool, and stream.
Oh, then the clouds were ministers of joy
To the rapt spirit of the dreamy boy!
Have passed from earth like suns untimely set! Do ye not look from yonder throne of clouds
Beckoning me now, with eager glance to come
To the bright portals of your heavenly home?
Skeptic! whose chilling creed
Would chain the spirit to life's bounded span,
Learn from the clouds that upward poise their wing,
To value man!
Nor deem the soul divested of its shroud-
Less glorious in its essence than a cloud!
Now down the mountain's rugged western side,
Descending slow, our lonely travellers hied,
Deep in a narrow glen, within whose breast
The rolling fragments of the mountain rest;
Rocks tumbled on each other by rude chance,
Crown'd with grey fern, and mosses, met the glance,
Through which a brawling river braved its way,
Dashing among the rocks in foamy spray.
Here, 'mid the fragments of a broken world,
In wild and rough confusion, idly hurl'd,
Where ne'er was heard the woodman's echoing stroke, Rose a huge forest of gigantic oak;
With heads that tower'd half up the mountain's side,
And arms extending round them far and wide,
They look'd coeval with old mother earth,
And seem'd to claim with her an equal birth.
There, by a lofty rock's moss-mantled base,
Our tired adventurers found a resting place;
Beneath its dark, o'erhanging, sullen brow,
The little bevy nestled snug below,
And with right sturdy appetite, and strong,
Devour'd the rustic meal they brought along.
The squirrel eyed them from his lofty tree,
And chirp'd as wont, with merry morning glee;
The woodcock crow'd as if alone he were,
Or heeded not the strange intruders there,
Sure sign they little knew of man's proud race
In that sequester'd mountain 'biding place;
For wheresoe'er his wandering footsteps tend,
Man never makes the rural train his friend;
Acquaintance that brings other beings near,
Produces nothing but distrust or fear:
Beasts flee from man the more his heart they know,
And fears, at last, to fix'd aversion grow,
As thus in blithe serenity they sat,
Beguiling resting time with lively chat,
A distant, half heard murmur caught the ear,
Each moment waxing louder and more near,
A dark obscurity spread all around,
And more than twilight seem'd to veil the ground,
While not a leaf e'en of the aspen stirr'd,
And not a sound but that low moan was heard.
There is a moment when the boldest heart
That would not stoop an inch to 'scape death's dart,
That never shrunk from certain danger here,
Will quail and shiver with an aguish fear;
"Tis when some unknown mischief hovers nigh, And heaven itself seems threatening from on high. Brave was our Basil, as became a man,
Yet still his blood a little cooler ran,
"Twixt fear and wonder, at that murmur drear, That every moment wax'd more loud and near.
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