Mountain idylls, and Other Poems

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Castner King
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Title: Mountain idylls, and Other Poems
Author: Alfred Castner King
Release Date: October 20, 2004 [EBook #13809]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
0. START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOUNTAIN
IDYLLS, AND OTHER POEMS ***
Produced by Ted Garvin, Karen Dalrymple and the PG Online
Distributed Proofreading Team.
[Illustration: Portrait of Author]
Mountain Idylls
and Other Poems
BY
ALFRED CASTNER KING
CHICAGO: NEW YORK: TORONTO
Fleming H. Revell
Company
LONDON and EDINBURGH
1901
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
MAY
New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave.

London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street
TO THE MANY FRIENDS WHO HAVE SO
KINDLY

ASSISTED IN THE ARRANGEMENT
OF THE
MANUSCRIPTS FOR
PUBLICATION, AFTER THE
SHADOWS
OF HOPELESS BLINDNESS DESCENDED

UPON ME FOREVER, THIS VOLUME
IS
AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED
Table of Contents.
Preface
Grandeur
Nature's Child
To the Pines
Reflections

Life's Mystery
The Fallen Tree
There is an Air of Majesty
Think
Not That the Heart Is Devoid of Emotion
Humanity's Stream

Nature's Lullaby
The Spirit of Freedom Is Born of the Mountains

The Valley of the San Miguel
To Mother Huberta
Suggested by a
Mountain Eagle
The Silvery San Juan
As the Shifting Sands of the
Desert
Missed
If I Have Lived Before
The Darker Side
The
Miner
Life's Undercurrent
They Cannot See the Wreaths We Place

Mother--Alpha and Omega
Empty Are the Mother's Arms
In Deo
Fides
Shall Love, as the Bridal Wreath, Wither and Die
Shall Our
Memories Live When the Sod Rolls Above Us
A Reverie
Love's
Plea
Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust
Despair
Hidden Sorrows
Oh,
a Beautiful Thing Is the Flower That Fadeth
Smiles
A Request

Battle Hymn
The Nation's Peril
Echoes From Galilee

Go, and Sin
No More
Gently Lead Me, Star Divine
Dying Hymn
In Mortem
Meditare
Deprive This Strange and Complex World
The Legend of
St. Regimund
As the Indian
The Fragrant Perfume of the Flowers

An Answer
Fame
The First Storm
Thoughts
From a Saxon
Legend
Christmas Chimes
The Unknowable
The Suicide
I
Think When I Stand in the Presence of Death
Hope
Metabole
List of Illustrations.
Portrait of Author
"Grandeur"
Mount Wilson
Mountain View in
San Juan
Scene in Ouray
Uncompahgre Cañon
Mountain Scene
in San Juan
Emerald Lake
Scene near Telluride
Bridal Veil Falls


Lizard Head
Trout Lake
Box Cañon Looking Inward
Ouray,
Colorado
Box Cañon Looking Outward
Ironton Park
Bear Creek
Falls
[Illustration: "A Wilderness of weird fantastic shapes."]
PREFACE
"Of making many books there is no end."--Eccles. 12:12.
When the above words were written by Solomon, King of Israel, about
three thousand years ago, they were possibly inspired by the existence
even at that early period of an extensive and probably overweighted
literature.
The same literary conditions are as true to-day as when the above
truism emanated from that most wonderful of all human intellects.
Every age and generation, as well as every changing religious or
political condition, has brought with it its own peculiar and essentially
differing current literature, which, as a rule, continued a brief season,
and then vanished, perishing with the age and conditions which called
it into being; leaving, however, an occasional volume, masterpiece, or
even quotation, to become classic, and in the form of standard literature
survive for generations, and in many instances for ages.
Poetry has always occupied a unique position in literature; and though
from a pecuniary stand-point usually unprofitable, it enjoys the decided
advantage of longevity.
The mysterious ages of antiquity have bequeathed to all succeeding
time several of earth's noblest epics, while the contemporaneous prose,
if any existed, has long lain buried in the inscrutable archives of the
remote past.
The two most notable of these, the Iliad and the Odyssey, are believed
to have been transmitted from generation to generation, orally, by the
minstrels and minnisingers, until the introduction or inception of the
Greek alphabet, when they were reduced to parchment, and, surviving

all the vicissitudes of time and sequent political and religious change,
still occupy a prominent place in literature.
The Book of Job, generally accepted as the most ancient of writings,
now extant, whether sacred or secular, was doubtless originally a
primitive though sublime poetical effusion.
The prose works contemporaneous with Chaucer, Spencer, and even
with that most wonderful of literary epochs, the Elizabethan age, are
now practically obsolete, while the poetical efforts remain in some
instances with increased prominence.
Someone, (although just who is difficult to determine,--though it savors
of the Greek School of Philosophy,--)has delivered the following
injunction: "Do right because it is right, not from fear of punishment or
hope of reward." Waiving the question as to whether it is right or not to
compose poetry, he who aspires in that direction can reasonably expect
no material recompense, though the experience of Dante, Cervantes,
Leigh Hunt, and others, proves conclusively that poets do not always
escape punishment. In fact, about the only emolument to be expected is
the gratification of an inherent and indefinable impulse, which impels
one to the task with equal force, whether