The spacious cavern of some virgin mine, Deep in the womb of earth where the gems grow, And diamonds put forth radiant rods and bud With amethyst and topaz- and the place Lit up, most royally, with the pure beam That dwells in them. Or haply the vast hall Of fairy palace, that outlasts the night, 80 And fades not in the glory of the sun;Where crystal columns send forth slender shafts And crossing arches; and fantastic aisles Wind from the sight in brightness, and are lost Among the crowded pillars. Raise thine Is blue as the spring heaven it gazes at Muster their wrath again, and rapid clouds Shade heaven, and bounding on the frozen earth 121 Shall fall their volleyed stores, rounded like hail And white like snow, and the loud North again Shall buffet the vexed forest in his rage. 1820. 1821. And thou from some I love wilt take a life Dear to me as my own. Yet while the spell Is on my spirit, and I talk with thee 20 In sight of all thy trophies, face to face, Meet is it that my voice should utter forth Thy nobler triumphs; I will teach the world To thank thee. Who are thine accusers? - Who? The living! they who never felt thy power, And know thee not. The curses of the wretch Whose crimes are ripe, his sufferings when thy hand Is on him, and the hour he dreads is come, Are writ among thy praises. But the goodDoes he whom thy kind hand dismissed to Is left to teach their worship; then the fires Of sacrifice are chilled, and the green moss O'ercreeps their altars; the fallen images Cumber the weedy courts, and for loud hymns, Chanted by kneeling multitudes, the wind Shrieks in the solitary aisles. When he Who gives his life to guilt, and laughs at all The laws that God or man has made, and round Hedges his seat with power, and shines in wealth, 70 Lifts up his atheist front to scoff at Hea ven, And celebrates his shame in open day, Thou, in the pride of all his crimes, cutt'st off The horrible example. Touched by thine, The extortioner's hard hand foregoes the gold Wrung from the o'er-worn poor. The perjurer, Whose tongue was lithe, e'en now, and voluble Against his neighbor's life, and he who laughed 80 And leaped for joy to see a spotless fame His conscience to preserve a worthless life, Oft, too, dost thou reform thy victim, long Ere his last hour. And when the reveller, Mad in the chase of pleasure, stretches on, And strains each nerve, and clears the path of life 90 The mountain called by this name is a remarkable precipice in Great Barrington, overlooking the rich and picturesque valley of the Housatonic, in the western part of Massachusetts. At the southern extremity is, or was a few years since, a conical pile of small stones, erected, according to the tradition of the surrounding country, by the Indians, in memory of a woman of the Stockbridge tribe who killed herself by leaping from the edge of the precipice. Until within a few years past, small parties of that tribe used to arrive from their settlement in the western part of the State of New York, on visits to Stockbridge, the place of their nativity and former residence. A young woman belonging to one of these parties related, to a friend of the author, the story on which the poem of Monument Mountain' is founded. An Indian girl had formed an attachment for her cousin, which, according to the customs of the tribe, was unlawful. She was, in consequence, seized with a deep melancholy, and resolved to destroy herself. In company with a female friend, she repaired to the mountain, decked out for the occasion in all her ornaments, and, after passing the day on the summit in singing with her companion the traditional songs of her nation, she threw herself headlong from the rockand was killed. (BRYANT.) |