Mountain idylls, and Other Poems | Page 5

letters, with abstracted mien,?And he whose every thought was on the toil?Which made his bare existence possible;?The blushing maiden, pure and innocent;?The stately grandam, dignified and gray;?The matron, with the babe upon her breast;?The silly superannuated flirt,?Who nursed her waning beauty day by day,?And still essayed to act the role of youth;?The gay coquette and belle of other days,?Who in life's morning, with disdainful laugh,?Had quaffed the cup of pleasure to its dregs,?And now, grown old, must pay the penalty?In wrinkles and uncourted loneliness;?The widow, who, but newly desolate,?Would grasp a hand, then start to find it gone;?The spendthrift and the sordid usurer,?Who knew no sentiment save lust for gold;?The bloated drunkard, sinking 'neath the weight?Of wassail inclination dissolute;?The youth, who, following his baleful steps,?Reeled for the first time from intemperance;?And she who had forgot her covenant,?In brazen infamy and unwept shame;--?The good, the bad, the impious and unjust,?The energetic and the indolent,?The adolescent and the venerable,?Passed by, pursuant of their various ways.

The aged and decrepit plodded by,?Whom one would think were ripe for any tomb,?Yet quailed at dissolution's very thought;?The crippled and deformed, with cane and crutch,?Came limping by, as eddies in the stream;?The mendicant, whose eyes might never see?The golden sunlight, felt his way along,?And though the world was dark, still shrank from death.?Some faces showed the trace of recent tears,?And some revealed the impress of despair;?Others endeavored with a careless smile?To hide a breast surcharged with hopelessness,?As one afflicted with a foul disease?Strives to avoid the scrutinizing gaze?By the assumption of indifference;?Some whose misfortunes and adversities?And oft repeated disappointments, dried?The fountain heads of kindness, and had turned?Life's sweetest joys to gall and bitterness.?Each face betrayed some sort or form of woe;?In more than one I read a tragedy.

How complex is existence! What a maze?Of complication and entanglement!?Each thread combining with the other threads?Fulfills its office in the labyrinth;?Each link concatenates the other links?Which constitute the vast and endless chain?Of human life, and human destiny,--?The strange phantasmagoria of fate.

So we, in life's procession, pass along?To the accompaniment of secret dirge,?Or laughter interspersed with tear and groan;?Nor pause a moment, nor retrace a step,?But march in Fate's spectacular review?In pageant to our common goal--
The Grave.
Nature's Lullaby.
A MOUNTAIN NOCTURNE
In forest shade my couch is made.?And there I calmly lie,?With thought confined in pensive mind,?And contemplate the sky;?I wonder if the frowning cliff,?The valley and the wood,?Or rugged freaks of mountain peaks,?Enjoy their solitude.
The heavens hold a sphere of gold,?A full and placid moon,?Suspended high, in cloudless sky,?With constellations strewn;?Its mellow beam, on rill and stream,?In silvery sheen I see;?Before its light, the shades of night?As evil spirits, flee.
In space afar, a shooting star,?With swift, uncertain course,?In dazzling sparks its passage marks,?As it expends its force;?The mountains bare reflect its glare?Of weird, unearthly light,?And e'en the skies, in glad surprise,?Behold its gorgeous flight.
The spruce and pine, at timber-line,?In straggling patches strewn,?Surcharge the breeze with melodies,?The forests' plaintive tune;?As they descend, the waters blend?In babbling harmony,?And soothe to rest my tranquil breast,?With Nature's lullaby.
[Illustration: "Where the torrent falls o'er the mountain wall."
BRIDAL VEIL FALLS, NEAR TELLURIDE, SAN MIGUEL COUNTY, COLORADO.]
The Spirit of freedom is Born of the Mountains.
The spirit of freedom is born of the mountains,?In gorge and in ca?on it hovers and dwells;?Pervading the torrents and crystalline fountains,?Which dash through the valleys and forest clad dells.
The spirit of freedom, so firm and impliant,?Is borne on the breeze, whose invisible waves?Descend from the mountain peaks, stern and defiant--?Created for freemen, but never for slaves.
The Valley of the San Miguel.
In the golden West, by fond Nature blest,?Lies a vale which my heart holds dear;?Where the zephyr blows from eternal snows?And tempers the atmosphere;?Where the torrent falls o'er the mountain walls,?As its thunderous echoes thrill,?Where the sparkling mist, by the rainbow kissed,?Decks the Valley of San Miguel[B].
Where the birds of spring, in their season sing,?Their spontaneous melodies;?Where the columbine and the stately pine?Stand quivering in the breeze;?Where the aspen tall hugs the trachyte wall,?And the wild rose bedecks the hill;?Where the willows weep, and their vigils keep,?On the banks of the San Miguel.
Where the mountains high, cleave the azure sky,?With their turrets so bleak and gray;?Where the morning light crowns the dizzy height,?At the break of the summer's day;?Where the crags look down with an austere frown,?O'er the valley so calm and still;?Where the mesas blue, blend their dreamy hue?With the skies of the San Miguel.
Where the mountains hold a vast wealth of gold,?In the quartz ledge and placer bar;?Where the hills resound with the constant sound?Of the stamp mill's battering jar;?Where the waters dash with the rhythmic splash?Of the cascade and mountain rill,?As they laugh and flow to the lands below,?Through the turbulent San Miguel.
Where the shadows glide, in the eventide,?As the sun, to nocturnal rest,?With the dazzling rays of a world ablaze,?Sinks