Mountain Pictures

I. Franconia from the Pemigewasset     Once more, O Mountains of the North, unveil     Your brows, and lay your cloudy mantles by     And once more, ere the eyes that seek ye fail,     Uplift against the blue walls of the sky     Your mighty shapes, and let the sunshine weave     Its golden net-work in your belting woods,     Smile down in rainbows from your falling floods,     And on your kingly brows at morn and eve     Set crowns of fire! So shall my soul receive     Haply the secret of your calm and strength,     Your unforgotten beauty interfuse     My common life, your glorious shapes and hues     And sun-dropped splendors at my bidding come,     Loom vast through dreams, and stretch in billowy length     From the sea-level of my lowland home!     They rise before me! Last nights thunder-gust     Roared not in vain: for where its lightnings thrust     Their tongues of fire, the great peaks seem so near,     Burned clean of mist, so starkly bold and clear,     I almost pause the wind in the pines to hear,     The loose rocks fall, the steps of browsing deer.     The clouds that shattered on yon slide-worn walls     And splintered on the rocks their spears of rain     Have set in play a thousand waterfalls,     Making the dusk and silence of the woods     Glad with the laughter of the chasing floods,     And luminous with blown spray and silver gleams,     While, in the vales below, the dry-lipped streams     Sing to the freshened meadow-lands again.     So, let me hope, the battle-storm that beats     The land with hail and fire may pass away     With its spent thunders at the break of day,     Like last nights clouds, and leave, as it retreats,     A greener earth and fairer sky behind,     Blown crystal-clear by Freedoms Northern wind!     II. Monadnock from Wachuset.     I would I were a painter, for the sake     Of a sweet picture, and of her who led,     A fitting guide, with reverential tread,     Into that mountain mystery. First a lake     Tinted with sunset; next the wavy lines     Of far receding hills; and yet more far,     Monadnock lifting from his night of pines     His rosy forehead to the evening star.     Beside us, purple-zoned, Wachuset laid     His head against the West, whose warm light made     His aureole; and oer him, sharp and clear,     Like a shaft of lightning in mid-launching stayed,     A single level cloud-line, shone upon     By the fierce glances of the sunken sun,     Menaced the darkness with its golden spear!     So twilight deepened round us. Still and black     The great woods climbed the mountain at our back;     And on their skirts, where yet the lingering day     On the shorn greenness of the clearing lay,     The brown old farm-house like a birds-nest hung.     With home-life sounds the desert air was stirred     The bleat of sheep along the hill we heard,     The bucket plashing in the cool, sweet well,     The pasture-bars that clattered as they fell;     Dogs barked, fowls fluttered, cattle lowed; the gate     Of the barn-yard creaked beneath the merry weight     Of sun-brown children, listening, while they swung,     The welcome sound of supper-call to hear;     And down the shadowy lane, in tinklings clear,     The pastoral curfew of the cow-bell rung.     Thus soothed and pleased, our backward path we took,     Praising the farmers home. He only spake,     Looking into the sunset oer the lake,     Like one to whom the far-off is most near:     Yes, most folks think it has a pleasant look;     I love it for my good old mothers sake,     Who lived and died here in the peace of God!     The lesson of his words we pondered oer,     As silently we turned the eastern flank     Of the mountain, where its shadow deepest sank,     Doubling the night along our rugged road:     We felt that man was more than his abode,     The inward life than Natures raiment more;     And the warm sky, the sundown-tinted hill,     The forest and the lake, seemed dwarfed and dim     Before the saintly soul, whose human will     Meekly in the Eternal footsteps trod,     Making her homely toil and household ways     An earthly echo of the song of praise     Swelling from angel lips and harps of seraphim.