Mountain idylls, and Other Poems | Page 2

literature, unless it should contain something in the nature of a deviation from beaten literary paths.
Whether the reading public will regard this as such or not is a question for the future to determine, as every book is a creature of circumstance, and at the date of its publication an algebraic unknown quantity.
It was not the original intention of the author to publish any of his effusions in collective form until more mature years and riper judgment should better qualify him for the task of composition, and should enable him to still further pursue the important studies of etymology, rhetoric, Latin and Greek, and complete the education which youthful environment denied.
On the 17th of March, A.D. 1900, occurred an accident in the form of a premature mining explosion which banished the light of the Colorado sun from his eyes forever, adding the almost insurmountable barrier of total and hopeless blindness to those of limited means and insufficient education. At first further effort seemed useless, but as time meliorates in some degree even the most deplorable and distressing physical conditions, ambition slowly rallied, and while lying for several months a patient in various hospitals in an ineffectual attempt to regain even partial sight, the following ideas and efforts of past years were gradually recalled from the recesses of memory, and reduced to their present form, in which, with no small hesitation and misgiving, they are presented to the consideration of the reading public, which in the humble opinion of the author has frequently failed to receive and appreciate productions of vastly superior merit.
Ouray, Colorado, March 15, 1901.
[Illustration:?"I stood at sunrise on the topmost part,?Of lofty mountain, massively sublime."
MOUNT WILSON, SAN MIGUEL COUNTY, COLORADO.]
Mountain Idylls and Other Poems
Grandeur.
Dedicated to the mountains of the San Juan district, Colorado, as seen from the summit of Mt. Wilson.
I stood at sunrise, on the topmost part?Of lofty mountain, massively sublime;?A pinnacle of trachyte, seamed and scarred?By countless generations' ceaseless war?And struggle with the restless elements;?A rugged point, which shot into the air,?As by ambition or desire impelled?To pierce the eternal precincts of the sky.
Below, outspread,?A scene of such terrific grandeur lay?That reeled the brain at what the eyes beheld;?The hands would clench involuntarily?And clutch from intuition for support;?The eyes by instinct closed, nor dared to gaze?On such an awful and inspiring sight.
The sun arose with bright transcendent ray,?Up from behind a bleak and barren reef;?His face resplendent with beatitude,?Solar effulgence and combustive gleam;?Bathing the scene in such a wealth of light?That none could marvel that primeval man,?Rude and untaught, whene'er the sun appeared,?Fell down and worshiped.
A wilderness of weird, fantastic shapes,?Of precipice and stern declivity;?Of dizzy heights, and towering minarets;?Colossal columns and basaltic spires?Which pointing heavenward, appeared to wave?In benediction o'er the depths beneath.
Uneven crags and cliffs of various form;?Abysmal depths, and dire profundities;?Chasms so deep and awful that the eye?Of soaring eagle dare not gaze below,?Lest, dizzied, he should lose his aerial poise,?And headlong falling, reach the gulf beneath.
Majestic turrets, and the stately dome?Which, ovaled by the slow but tireless hand?Of eons of disintegrating time,?Still with impressive aspect rears its brow?Defiant of mutation and decay.
[Illustration: "Majestic turrets and the stately dome."
MOUNTAIN VIEW, SAN JUAN, COLORADO.]
The crevice deep and inaccessible;?Fissure and rent, where the intrusive dike's?Creative and destructive agency?Leaves many an enduring monument?Of metamorphic and eruptive power;?Of molten deluge, and volcanic flood;?Fracture and break, the silent stories tell?Of dire convulsion in the ages past;?Of subterranean catastrophe,?And cataclysm of internal force.
The trachyte wall, beseamed and battle scarred;?The porphyritic tower and citadel;?The granite ramparts and embattlements?Of nature's fort, impregnable and wild,?Stand as a symbol of eternal strength,?And hurl a challenge to the elements!
Ca?ons of startling and appalling depths,?With caverns, vast and gloomy, which would seem?Meet for the haunt of centaur or of gnome;?The gorgon and the labyrinthodon;?The clumsy mammoth and the dinosaur;?Or all gigantic and unwieldy shapes?Which earth has seen in the mysterious past,?Would seem in more accord and harmony?With such surroundings than the puny form?Of insignificant, conceited man.
And interspersed amid these solemn peaks?Lie many a pleasant vale and grassy slope,?Besprinkled with the drooping columbine,?And fragrant growths of all harmonious tints,?Whose variegated colors punctuate?Grandeur with beauty, and fearless, bloom?In the forbidding shadow of the cliffs,?And to the margin of the snowy combs?Which still resist the sun's persuasive ray.
A lakelet, cool, pellucid and serene,?Fed by the drippings from eternal snows,?Lies like a mirror 'neath a frowning cliff,?Or as a gem, majestically ensconced?In diadem of crag and pinnacle.
Down towards the distant valley's sultry clime,?Both solitary, and in straggling groups;?In solid phalanx, rigid and compact;?In labyrinth of branches interspread,?Impervious to the rain and midday sun;?In form spontaneous, without regard?To law of uniformity, there stand?In silent awe, or whispering to the breeze,?The sombre fir and melancholy pine.?And many a denuded avenue?Of varying and considerable width,?Cut through the growth of balsam, spruce and