Mountain idylls, and Other Poems | Page 3

pine,?Which stands erect and proud on either hand,?Attests the swift and desolating force?Of fearful, devastating avalanche.
[Illustration: "The trachyte wall beseamed and battle scarred."
SCENE IN OURAY COUNTY, COLORADO.]
The mountain rill its pleasant music makes,?As the descendant waters roll along,?In rhythmic flow and dulcet cantabile,?In various concord and harmonious pitch,?Pursuant of its journey to the sea;?The murmuring treble of the rivulet,?Uniting with the deep and ponderous bass?Of torrent wild and foaming cataract;?The thunderous, reverberating tones?And seething ebullition of the falls?Are blended in one grand euphonious chord.
Far in the hazy distance, as the eye?With vague perceptive vision penetrates,?Lie the vast mesas of ethereal hue,?Stretched in a calm and sleepy quietude,?Dreamy repose and blue tranquillity;?The eye which rests upon the drowsy scene?Beholds a dim horizon, which presents?No line of demarcation or of bounds;?A merging union, blurred and indistinct;?Fuliginous confusion, that the eye?In viewing gazes, but no more discerns?Which is the earth, and which the azure sky.
But mark the change!?A cloud, which floated in the atmosphere,?An inconsiderable and feathery speck?Of no proportions, now augmented, wears?A threatening aspect, ominously dark;?Enveloping the heaven's canopy?In lowering shadow and portentous gloom;?In pall of ambient obscurity.?The fork-ed lightnings ramify and play?Upon a background of sepulchral black;?The growling thunders rumble a reply?Of detonation awful and profound,?To every corruscation's vivid gleam;?In deep crescendo and fortissimo,?In quavering tremolo and stately fugue?Echoes, reverberates and dies away!
But soon the sun, with smiling radiance,?Through orifice, through rift and aperture,?Invades the storm, and dissipates the clouds,?Which scatter, cowering and ephemeral,?Hugging the cliffs, and o'er the dire abyss?Hover, in fleecy, ever changing form,?And in a transient season disappear;?Vanish, as man must vanish, and are gone.
The moist precipitation of the storm?Revives, refreshes and invigorates?The various vegetation, and bedews?Each blade of grass and floweret with a tear;?As nature, weeping o'er the faults of man.
[Illustration:?"Would seem in more accord and harmony,?With such surroundings than the puny form?Of insignificant, conceited man."
UNCOMPAHGRE CA?ON, NEAR OURAY, COLORADO.]
The day recedes, and twilight's neutral shade?Succeeds in turn, and ushers in the night,?Whose wings, outstretched and shadowy, descend,?And in nocturnal mantle robes the scene.
A hush prevails! Oppressive and profound;?A silence, broken only by the breeze;?A dormant quiet-essence and repose;?Pervading calm and sweet oblivion,--?As nature wrapt in soft refreshing sleep.
Far in the east a solitary star?Peeps through the sombre curtain of the night--?In hesitating dubitation burns;?In lonely splendor, flashes for a time,?Till scattering celestial lights appear,--?The vanguard of an astral multitude?Of constellations, jewelled and serene,?Which fill the lofty dome of space, until?The heavens sparkle with the myriad?Of spectra, nebulae and satellite;?With stellar scintillation, and the orbs?Of less refulgence, which, reflective shine;?With falling star and trailing meteor;?In one grand culmination, glittering?To their Creator's glory!
A burst of mellow lunar radiance?Inundates and illuminates the scene;?The waxing moon, in her meridian full,?Her beam vicarious disseminates,?And shining, hides with her superior light,?The twinkling beauty of the firmament!
At the stupendous and inspiring sight?Of cosmic grandeur of the universe,?A sense of vague and overwhelming awe;?Of inconceivable immensity,?The being's inmost recess permeates;?And man, the atom in comparison,?In spellbound admiration, mutely stands;?With speculative meditation, dwells?On that most solemn of impressive thoughts,?The goodness of the Deity to man![A]
[Illustration:?"Both solitary and in straggling groups;?In solid phalanx, rigid and compact."
MOUNTAIN SCENE, SAN JUAN COUNTY, COLORADO.]
FOOTNOTES:
[A] Composed at St. Anthony's hospital, Denver, Colo., from whence the author was led hopelessly blind.
Nature's Child.
I love to tread the solitudes,?The forests and the trackless woods,?Where nature, undisturbed by man,?Pursues her voluntary plan.
Where nature's chemistry distills?The fountains and the laughing rills,?I love to quaff her sparkling wine,?And breathe the fragrance of the pine.
I love to dash the crystal dews?From floral shapes of varied hues,?And interweave the modest white?Of columbine in garlands bright.
I love to lie within the shade,?On grassy couch, by nature made,?And listen to the warbling notes?From her fair songsters' feathered throats.
And freed from artificial wants,?I love to dwell in nature's haunts,?And by the mountain's crystal lake?A rustic habitation make.
I love to scale the mountain height?And watch the eagle in his flight,?Or gaze upon the azure sea?Of aerial immensity.
I love the busy marts of trade,?I love the things which men have made,?Though man has charms, none such as these,?In him the child of nature sees.
To the Pines.
Ye sad musicians of the wood,?Whose dirges fill the solitude,?Whose minor strains and melodies?Are wafted on the whispering breeze,?Whose plaintive chants and listless sighs,?Ascend as incense to the skies;?Do solemn tones afford relief,?With you, as men, a vent for grief?
[Illustration:?"Inverted in fantastic form,?Below the water line."
EMERALD LAKE, SAN MIGUEL COUNTY, COLORADO.]
Reflections.
On the margin of a lakelet,?In a rugged mountain clime,?Where precipice and pinnacle?Of countenance sublime,?Cast their weird, austere reflections?In the water's glistening sheen,?I strolled in contemplative mood,?Both pensive and serene.
As in a crystal mirror,?In that lakelet's placid face,?I saw the mountains upside down,?With all their pristine grace;?I saw each cliff and point of rocks,?I saw the stately pine,?Inverted in fantastic form?Below the water line.
I paused in admiration;?And with