The Mountain

Two thousand feet in air it standsBetwixt the bright and shaded lands,Above the regions it dividesAnd borders with its furrowed sides.The seaward valley laughs with lightTill the round sun o’erhangs this height;But then the shadow of the crestNo more the plains that lengthen westEnshrouds, yet slowly, surely creepsEastward, until the coolness steepsA darkling league of tilth and wold,And chills the flocks that seek their fold.

Not like those ancient summits lone,Mont Blanc, on his eternal throne,—The city-gemmed Peruvian peak,—The sunset-portals landsmen seek,Whose train, to reach the Golden Land,Crawls slow and pathless through the sand,—Or that, whose ice-lit beacon guidesThe mariner on tropic tides,And flames across the Gulf afar,A torch by day, by night a star,—Not thus, to cleave the outer skies,Does my serener mountain rise,Nor aye forget its gentle birthUpon the dewy, pastoral earth.

But ever, in the noonday light,Are scenes whereof I love the sight,—Broad pictures of the lower worldBeneath my gladdened eyes unfurled.Irradiate distances revealFair nature wed to human weal;The rolling valley made a plain;Its checkered squares of grass and grain;The silvery rye, the golden wheat,The flowery elders where they meet,—Ay, even the springing corn I see,And garden haunts of bird and bee;And where, in daisied meadows, shinesThe wandering river through its vines,Move specks at random, which I knowAre herds a-grazing to and fro.

Yet still a goodly height it seemsFrom which the mountain pours his streams,Or hinders, with caressing hands,The sunlight seeking other lands.Like some great giant, strong and proud,He fronts the lowering thunder-cloud,And wrests its treasures, to bestowA guerdon on the realm below;Or, by the deluge roused from sleepWithin his bristling forest-keep,Shakes all his pines, and far and wideSends down a rich, imperious tide.At night the whistling tempests meetIn tryst upon his topmost seat,And all the phantoms of the skyFrolic and gibber, storming by.

By day I see the ocean-mistsFloat with the current where it lists,And from my summit I can hailCloud-vessels passing on the gale,—The stately argosies of air,—And parley with the helmsmen there;Can probe their dim, mysterious source,Ask of their cargo and their course,—Whence come? where bound?—and wait reply,As, all sails spread, they hasten by.

If, foiled in what I fain would know,Again I turn my eyes belowAnd eastward, past the hither meadWhere all day long the cattle feed,A crescent gleam my sight alluresAnd clings about the hazy moors,—The great, encircling, radiant sea,Alone in its immensity.

Even there, a queen upon its shore,I know the city evermoreHer palaces and temples rears,And wooes the nations to her piers;Yet the proud city seems a moleTo this horizon-bounded whole;And, from my station on the mount,The whole is little worth accountBeneath the overhanging sky,That seems so far and yet so nigh.Here breathe I inspiration rare,Unburdened by the grosser airThat hugs the lower land, and feelThrough all my finer senses stealThe life of what that life may be,Freed from this dull earth’s density,When we, with many a soul-felt thrill,Shall thrid the ether at our will,Through widening corridors of mornAnd starry archways swiftly borne.

Here, in the process of the night,The stars themselves a purer lightGive out, than reaches those who gazeEnshrouded with the valley’s haze.October, entering Heaven’s fane,Assumes her lucent, annual reign:Then what a dark and dismal clod,Forsaken by the Sons of God,Seems this sad world, to those which marchAcross the high, illumined arch,And with their brightness draw me forthTo scan the splendors of the North!I see the Dragon, as he toilsWith Ursa in his shining coils,And mark the Huntsman lift his shield,Confronting on the ancient fieldThe Bull, while in a mystic rowThe jewels of his girdle glow;Or, haply, I may ponder longOn that remoter, sparkling throng,The orient sisterhood, aroundWhose chief our Galaxy is wound;Thus, half enwrapt in classic dreams,And brooding over Learning’s gleams,I leave to gloom the under-land,And from my watch-tower, close at hand,Like him who led the favored race,I look on glory face to face!

So, on the mountain-top, alone,I dwell, as one who holds a throne;Or prince, or peasant, him I countMy peer, who stands upon a mount,Sees farther than the tribes below,And knows the joys they cannot know;And, though beyond the sound of speechThey reign, my soul goes out to reach,Far on their noble heights elsewhere,My brother-monarchs of the air.