Mountain idylls, and Other Poems | Page 5

in crime and villainy
That Judas' vile,
ill-favored countenance
Would seem in contrast quite respectable;

Some features glowed with unfeigned honesty,
Some grimaced in
dissimulating craft,
Some smiled benignantly and passed along;

Some faces meek, some stern and resolute;
Some the embodiment of
gentleness;
Some whose specific aspects plainly told
Their fondest
dreams were not of earth, but heaven;
A newly wedded couple passed
that way,
In the sweet zenith of their honeymoon,
But little
dreaming what the future held.
The light and trivial fool, the brainless
fop;
The staid and sober priest and minister;
And she who
worshiped at proud fashion's shrine;
The mental giant, serious and
sad;
The thoughtful student and philosopher;
And some of intellect
diminutive;
The man of 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 cañon
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.