Built by the hand that fashioned the old world,
To separate its nations, and thrown down

When the flood drowned them. To the north, a path

Conducts you up the narrow battlement.

Steep is the western side, shaggy and wild
With mossy trees, and pinnacles of flint,
And many a hanging crag. But, to the east,
Sheer to the vale go down the bare old cliffs,—
Huge pillars, that in middle heaven upbear
Their weather-beaten capitals, here dark
With the thick moss of centuries, and there
Of chalky whiteness where the thunderbolt
Has splintered them. It is a fearful thing
To stand upon the beetling verge, and see
Where storm and lightning, from that huge gray wall,
Have tumbled down vast blocks, and at the base
Dashed them in fragments, and to lay thine ear
Over the dizzy depth, and hear the sound

Of winds, that struggle with the woods below,
Come up like ocean murmurs. But the scene
Is lovely round; a beautiful river there
Wanders amid the fresh and fertile meads,
The paradise he made unto himself,

Mining the soil for ages. On each side
The fields swell upward to the hills; beyond,

Above the hills, in the blue distance, rise

The mighty columns with which earth props heaven.

There is a tale about these reverend rocks,

A sad tradition of unhappy love,

And sorrows borne and ended, long ago,

When over these fair vales the savage sought

His game in the thick woods.

There was a maid, The fairest of the Indian maids, bright-eyed,

With wealth of raven tresses, a light form,
And a gay heart. About her cabin-door

The wide old woods resounded with her song
And fairy laughter all the summer day.

She loved her cousin; such a love was deemed,
By the morality of those stern tribes,

Incestuous, and she struggled hard and long
Against her love, and reasoned with her heart,
As simple Indian maiden might. In vain.
Then her eye lost its lustre, and her step
Its lightness, and the gray-haired men that passed
Her dwelling, wondered that they heard no more
The accustomed song and laugh of her, whose looks
Were like the cheerful smile of Spring, they said,
Upon the Winter of their age. She went

To weep where no eye saw, and was not found
When all the merry girls were met to dance,
And all the hunters of the tribe were out;
Nor when they gathered from the rustling husk
The shining ear; nor when, by the river's side,
They pulled the grape and startled the wild shades

With sounds of mirth. The keen-eyed Indian dames
Would whisper to each other, as they saw

Her wasting form, and say the girl will die.

One day into the bosom of a friend,

A playmate of her young and innocent years,

She poured her griefs. "Thou know'st, and thou alone,"
She said, "for I have told thee, all my love,
And guilt, and sorrow. I am sick of life.
All night I weep in darkness, and the morn
Glares on me, as upon a thing accursed,
That has no business on the earth. I hate
The pastimes and the pleasant toils that once
I loved; the cheerful voices of my friends
Have an unnatural horror in mine ear.

In dreams my mother, from the land of souls,
Calls me and chides me. All that look on me
Do seem to know my shame; I cannot bear
Their eyes; I cannot from my heart root out
The love that wrings it so, and I must die."

It was a summer morning, and they went
To this old precipice. About the cliffs
Lay garlands, ears of maize, and shaggy skins
Of wolf and bear, the offerings of the tribe
Here made to the Great Spirit, for they deemed,
Like worshippers of the elder time, that God

Doth walk on the high places and affect
The earth-o'erlooking mountains. She had on
The ornaments with which her father loved

To deck the beauty of his bright-eyed girl,
And bade her wear when stranger warriors came
To be his guests. Here the friends sat them down,
And sang, all day, old songs of love and death,
And decked the poor wan victim's hair with flowers,
And prayed that safe and swift might be her way
To the calm world of sunshine, where no grief
Makes the heart heavy and the eyelids red.
Beautiful lay the region of her tribe

Below her-waters resting in the embrace
Of the wide forest, and maize-planted glades
Opening amid the leafy wilderness.

She gazed upon it long, and at the sight
Of her own village peeping through the trees,
And her own dwelling, and the cabin roof
Of him she loved with an unlawful love,

And came to die for, a warm gush of tears
Ran from her eyes. But when the sun grew low

And the hill shadows long, she threw herself
From the steep rock and perished. There was scooped
Upon the mountain's southern slope, a grave;

And there they laid her, in the very garb

With which the maiden decked herself for death,

With the same withering wild flowers in her hair.

And o'er the mould that covered her, the tribe

Built up a simple monument, a cone

Of small loose stones. Thenceforward all who passed,
Hunter, and dame, and virgin, laid a stone

In silence on the pile. It stands there yet.
And Indians from the distant West, who come
To visit where their fathers' bones are laid,
Yet tell the sorrowful tale, and to this day
The mountain where the hapless maiden died
Is called the Mountain of the Monument.