Mountain idylls, and Other Poems | Page 4

calm complacency?I marveled at this photograph?From nature's gallery;?And as my eyes surveyed the scene?With solemn grandeur fraught,?This simile flashed through my mind?As instantly as thought:
As the stern, majestic mountains,?Without error or mistake,?Were reflected in the bosom?Of that cool, pellucid lake,?So our every thought and action,?Be it deed of hate or love,?May be photographed in record?In that gallery above.
Life's Mystery
I live, I move, I know not how, nor why,?Float as a transient bubble on the air,?As fades the eventide I, too, must die;?I came, I know not whence; I journey, where?
The Fallen Tree.
I passed along a mountain road,?Which led me through a wooded glen,?Remote from dwelling or abode?And ordinary haunts of men;?And wearied from the dust and heat.?Beneath a tree, I found a seat.
The tree, a tall majestic spruce,?Which had, perhaps for centuries,?Withstood, without a moment's truce,?The wing-ed warfare of the breeze;?A monarch of the solitude,?Which well might grace the noblest wood.
Beneath its cool and welcome shade,?Protected from the noontide rays,?The birds amid its branches played?And caroled forth their twittering praise;?A squirrel perched upon a limb?And chattered with loquacious vim.
E'er yet that selfsame week had sped,?On my return, I sought its shade;?But where it reared its form, instead;?A fallen monarch I surveyed,?Prostrate and broken on the ground,?Nor longer cast its shade around.
Uprooted and disheveled, there?The monarch of the forest lay;?As if in desolate despair?Its last resistance fell away,?And overwhelmed, in evil hour?Went down before the tempest's power.
Such are the final works of fate;?The birds to other branches flew;?And man, whatever his estate,?Must face that same mutation, too!?To-day, I stand erect and tall,?The morrow--may record my fall.
There is an Air of Majesty.
There is an air of majesty,?A bearing dignified and free,
About the mountain peaks;?Each crag of weather-beaten stone?Presents a grandeur of its own
To him who seeks.
There is a proud, defiant mein,?Expressive, stern, and yet serene,
About the precipice;?Whose rugged form looks grimly down,?And answers, with an austere frown
The sunlight's kiss.
The mountain, with the snow bank crowned;?The gorge, abysmal and profound;
Impress with aspect grand:?With unfeigned reverence I see?In canon and declivity
The All-Wise Hand.
Think Not that the Heart is Devoid of Emotion.
Think not that the heart is devoid of emotion,?Because of a countenance rugged and stern,?The bosom may hide the most fervent devotion,?As shadowy forests hide floweret and fern;?As the pearls which are down in the depths of the ocean,?The heart may have treasures which few can discern.
Think not the heart barren, because no reflection?Is flashed from the depths of its secret embrace;?External appearance may baffle detection,?And yet the heart beat with an ethical grace:?The breast may be charged with the truest affection?And never betray it by action or face.
[Illustration:?"Where nature's chemistry distills,?The fountain and the laughing rills."
SCENE NEAR TELLURIDE, SAN MIGUEL COUNTY, COLORADO.]
Humanity's Stream.
I stood upon a crowded thoroughfare,?Within a city's confines, where were met?All classes and conditions, and surveyed,?From a secluded niche or aperture,?The various, ever-changing multitude?Which passed along in restless turbulence,?And, as a human river, ebbed and flowed?Within its banks of brick and masonry.
Within this vast and heterogeneous throng,?One might discern all stages and degrees,?From wealth and power to helpless indigence;?Extravagance to trenchant penury,?And all extremes of want and misery.?Some blest by wealth, some cursed by poverty;?Some in positions neutral to them both;?Some wore a gaunt and ill-conditioned look?Which told its tale of lack of nourishment;?While others showed that irritated air?Which speaks of gout and pampered appetite;?Some following vocations quite reverse?From those which nature had endowed them for;?Some passed with face self-satisfied and calm,?As if the world bore nothing else but joy;?And some there were who, from the cradle's mouth,?As they pursued their journey to the grave,?Had felt no throb save that of misery;?The man of large affairs passed by in haste,?With mind preoccupied, nor thought of else?Save undertakings which concerned himself;?The shallow son of misplaced opulence?Came strutting by with self-important air,?With head erect in a contemptuous poise,?As if the stars were subject to his will,?And e'en the golden sun was something base,?Which had offended with its wholesome light?In shining on so great a personage,?A being more than ordinary clay,?And much superior to the vulgar herd!?Some faces passed which knew no kindly look,?And felt no friendly pressure of the hand;?And if the face depict the character,?Some passed so steeped 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