Mountains

With frontier strength ye stand your ground,With grand content ye circle round,Tumultuous silence for all sound,Ye distant nursery of rills,Monadnock, and the Peterborough hills;--Firm argument that never stirs,Outcircling the philosophers,--Like some vast fleetSailing through rain and sleet,Through winter’s cold and summer’s heat;Still holding on upon your high emprise,Until ye find a shore amid the skies;Not skulking close to land,With cargo contraband;For they who sent a venture out by yeHave set the Sun to seeTheir honesty.Ships of the line, each one,Ye westward run,Convoying clouds,Which cluster in your shrouds,Always before the gale,Under a press of sail,With weight of metal all untold;--I seem to feel ye in my firm seat here,Immeasurable depth of hold,And breadth of beam, and length of running gear.

Methinks ye take luxurious pleasureIn your novel western leisure;So cool your brows and freshly blue,As Time had nought for ye to do;For ye lie at your length,An unappropriated strength,Unhewn primeval timberFor knees so stiff, for masts so limber,The stock of which new earths are made,One day to be our western trade,Fit for the stanchions of a worldWhich through the seas of space is hurled.

While we enjoy a lingering ray,Ye still o’ertop the western day,Reposing yonder on God’s croft,Like solid stacks of hay.So bold a line as ne’er was writOn any page by human wit;The forest glows as ifAn enemy’s camp-fires shoneAlong the horizon,Or the day’s funeral pyreWere lighted there;Edged with silver and with gold,The clouds hang o’er in damask fold,And with fresh depth of amber lightThe west is dight,Where still a few rays slant,That even Heaven seems extravagant.Watatic HillLies on the horizon’s sillLike a child’s toy left overnight,And other duds to left and right;On the earth’s edge, mountains and treesStand as they were on air graven,Or as the vessels in a havenAwait the morning breeze.I fancy evenThrough your defiles windeth the way to heaven;And yonder still, in spite of history’s page,Linger the golden and the silver age;Upon the laboring galeThe news of future centuries is brought,And of new dynasties of thought,From your remotest vale.

But special I remember thee,Wachusett, who like meStandest alone without society.Thy far blue eye,A remnant of the sky,Seen through the clearing of the gorge,Or from the windows of the forge,Doth leaven all it passes by.Nothing is true,But stands ’tween me and you,Thou western pioneer,Who know’st not shame nor fear,By venturous spirit drivenUnder the eaves of heaven,And canst expand thee there,And breathe enough of air.Even beyond the WestThou migratestInto unclouded tracts,Without a pilgrim’s axe,Cleaving thy road on highWith thy well-tempered brow,And mak’st thyself a clearing in the sky.Upholding heaven, holding down earth,Thy pastime from thy birth,Not steadied by the one, nor leaning on the other;--May I approve myself thy worthy brother!