Ye are not one alike! In fork and fell,-
With spire and dome,—ye climb your way above,
As though in emulation proud ye strove
To spurn most distant each retiring dell!
Lightnings have scathed your peaks but could not quell Your giant-mass! However fierce the storm
With plastic power it varied every form, And moulded to detail this Spectacle !
And were this all, how noble 't were to gaze,
To call each height by its own rank and shape,
While with a rising joyance of amaze
We saw, as sudden pass and gorge should gape,
A scale to try where still in richer blaze
Earth shoots sublime to Heaven's blue waves her loftiest Cape!
But ye are more! The Monuments of power!
Typing the soul's best attributes of might,
Like you, most native to celestial light
Which ye reflect through day's extremest hour!
And when in wreaths of haze your summits lour,
Ye speak of mystic and eternal things,
Mingling with heaven upon those solemn wings
As if to its most fearful point ye 'd tower!
Ye tell of God! The mountains may depart,-
The hills remove,-how moveless is His Throne !
Forth from their searchless seats the rocks may start,
His love would fill the void itself alone!
Your Strength is His! He stamps your Symbol-art,
And writes it on your Tablets of unmouldering stone !
My soul swells through you ! On you live once more,—
Whether in flowing outline ye dispread,
Or heave on high the thunder-rifted head,—
The awful Chronicles of sacred yore,-
When kindred summits of another shore
Through all their grand and ever-varying range
Exhibited a thousand Marvels strange !
Why didst thou shake to centre, Sinai hoar?
Upon Thy terraced platform, Zion! rose
The great Jehovah's fixed and loved abode.
And there where Carmel still in beauty blows
Was re-established the eternal Code !
Tabor rejoice!-O Calvary, what throes
Are Thine! Fair Olivet, from Thee ascends our God !
Ye to me always were a life intense!
My youth disported on your cliffs at ease,
My cheek, unfurrowed then! flushed in your breeze;— While infancy reposed 'neath your defence,
Still would mine eye trace out the uplands whence
Ye left our nether earth, and then combined
With your proud barriers other worlds behind,
The curtains of unknown magnificence!
How my mind teemed with your sublimity!
-Its transcendental thoughts were then its life,—
And as it wrought itself a passage free,
Present and past, like flow and ebb in strife,
Chafed up its yearnings to their last degree!
And my heart strangely grew with feelings new and rife!
Ye are not strewn in vain !
Articulate, sonorous, often sweet,—
When silvery runnels tinkle, mix, and greet :-
But when ye overhang in beetling poise,
And Cataract, from on high, shouts to rejoice,
And the reverberating Thunder wakes,
And the deep-groaning belted Forest shakes,—
Then with that rousing clang, that blitheful noise,
Swell to the Lofty One your Anthem-Peal
Who tunes your mighty music! Low incline
Your heads where stateliest, brightest, natures kneel !
Thus pay the Adoration all divine,—
Plains, Streams, and Woods, with you shall vie in zeal,—
Skiddaw, Helvellyn, Scawfell, ye great Chieftain-Trine !
Since eye first rested on your wondrous heaps,
What looks of youth and age, of grief and joy,
Have turned toward you nor found that ye could cloy,—
And yet the fondest in its burial sleeps,
And from its orbit the foul reptile creeps!
What awful changes roll on at your base!
Nathless the turmoil strives in vain to rase
Your rock-foundations, or to bow your steeps!
For all is else inconstant,-though it seem
Firm and trustworthy, 't is the wind and cloud:
And Hope is the poor offspring of a dream,—
The husbandman the empty air has ploughed,
The pilgrim faints o'er the false mirage-stream,-
And there is only left, the bier, the grave, the shroud!
Blest trance of calm! A sabbath evening stays,
With fondling pleasure o'er thee, Mountain Sea!
Purpling each crag, illumining each tree,
And on the Mere's soft banks and gentle bays,
Streaming a flush of richly-pencilled rays!
O sweet among these grandeurs 't is to find
A little band of Christians disciplined,
Teaching the echoes, simple songs of praise!
For even here is sin and grief and care,—
Ah, it is not by Nature we can rise
To Thee, her God! However bright and fair
This lovely outward world, the sinner flies
To surer refuge,—and, with humbler prayer,
Another Temple seeks where there is SACRIFICE.
SONNETS COMPOSED AT THE SEA-SIDE AND IN VIEW OF FLAMBOROUGH HEAD.
WHATE'ER man images of profound and great!
Eternal Might! With
With energy unbound
In tide and main and ocean, Thou roll'st round!
Eternal Motion! Thou dost undulate
In gentlest ripple,-heave by cape, through strait!
Eternal Freshness! Breathed in every morn,
Wafting each gale which life and health hath borne !
Eternal Music! How Thy notes dilate
Like lute Æolian or in trumpet-peals!
Eternal Grand and Fair! Thy power can strew As spray, and break as foam, the proudest keels! Beneath the orient, or at eve, what hue
Thy crisped surface like a prism steals,—
Earth's fairest green, and Heaven's deepest blue !
WHAT is this field so smooth? No furrowed trace?
What mirror without waving line or flaw?
What sweeping sand-plain where no lizard claw
Hath left its print near the tent's dwelling-place?
Sylph hath not touched thee, nor the Horal race!
Ne'er saw I type, like thee, of perfect calm!
Not such as poets feign in bower of balm,—
Emotion! deep in awe and sweet in grace,-
As mother's rapture when she clasps her babe,-
Beauty's repose is here, gentle, benign,—
Still dread, as is the sphere of Astrolabe
Where undistracted stellar concaves shine,
When sages lift and spell the heavenly web!
Zephyr's wing folded! Day's devout decline!
THE storm-clouds burst along as demon-vans
Whirling the abysses from their lake-like sleep,-
Forms, monstrous as themselves, start from the deep,—
And yestreen swells, that glided fair as swans,
Now writhe in wrath like gored leviathans!
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