THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN. ALL round the lake the wet woods shake From drooping boughs their showers of pearl; From floating skiff to towering cliff The rising vapors part and curl. The west-wind stirs among the firs High up the mountain side emerging; The light illumes a thousand plumes Through billowy banners round them surging. A glory smites the craggy heights: That mighty face, that stony gaze! In the wild sky upborne so high Above us perishable creatures, Confronting Time with those sublime, Impassive, adamantine, features. Thou beaked and bald high front, miscalled The profile of a human face! No kin art thou, O Titan brow, To puny man's ephemeral race. The groaning earth to thee gave birth, Throes and convulsions of the planet; Lonely uprose, in grand repose, Those eighty feet of facial granite. Here long, while vast, slow ages passed, Thine eyes (if eyes be thine) beheld But solitudes of crags and woods. Where eagles screamed and panthers yelled. Before the fires of our pale sires In the first log-built cabin twinkled, Or red men came for fish and game, That scalp was scarred, that face was wrinkled. We may not know how long ago young; was Thy sovereign brow was seamed as Empires and states it antedates, And wars, and arts, and crime, and glory; In that dim morn when man was born Thy head with centuries was hoary. Thou lonely one! nor frost, nor sun, Nor tempest leaves on thee its trace; The stormy years are but as tears That pass from thy unchanging With unconcern as grand and stern, Canst thou not tell what then befell? What forces moved, or fast or slow; How grew the hills; what heats, what chills, What strange, dim life, so long ago? High-visaged peak, wilt thou not speak? One word for all our learned wrangle! What earthquakes shaped, what glaciers scraped, That nose, and gave the chin its Our pygmy thought to thee is naught, MY COMRADE AND I. WE two have grown up so divinely together, His being or mine was first called and decreed. In the life before birth, by inscrutable ties, We were linked each to each; I am bound up in him; I am life of his life, he is limb of my limb. Twin babes from one cradle, I tottered about with him, Sup with him, sleep with him, suffer, enjoy with him. Unseen in his bosom, a lamp to his feet; More near than a bridegroom, to him I am married, If my beam be withdrawn he is senseless and blind; I laugh with his laughter, and weep with his tears They see but one shape and they name us one name. When evil waylays us, and passion surprises, Am I the one sinner? of honors sole claimant Wrapped about me, a screen from the rough winds of Time, Where Life needeth not this terrestrial vesture? When comes the sad summons to sever the sweet I feel thy loosed fetters depart from my feet; When friends gather round us, pale-visaged and tearful, And kiss thy cold doors, for thy inmate mistaken; Their eyes seeing not the freed captive, arisen From thy trammels unclasped and thy shackles downshaken; Oh, then shall I linger, reluctant to break The dear sensitive chains that about me have grown? Ah, tenderly, tenderly over thee hovering, I shall look down on thee, empty and cloven, The glad fields of existence that naught can befall me MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER.* [From Self-Acquaintance.] ILL-CHOSEN PURSUITS. THE blind at an easel, the palsied with a graver, the halt making for the goal, Alike if itself be crooked, or the wow be strung awry; And the mind which were excellent in one way, but foolishly toileth in another, What is it but an ill-strung bow, and its aim a crooked arrow? By knowledge of self, thou provest thy powers; put not the racer to the plough, Nor goad the toilsome ox to wager his slowness with the fleet. The extracts from this author are from Proverbial Philosophy. [From Fame.] THE DIGNITY AND PATIENCE OF GENIUS. A GREAT mind is an altar on a hill; should the priest descend from his altitude To canvass offerings and worship from dwellers on the plain? Rather with majestic perseverance, will he minister in solitary grandeur, Confident the time will come when pilgrims shall be flocking to the shrine. For fame is the birthright of genius; and he recketh not how long it be delayed: The heir need not hasten to his heritage, when he knoweth that his tenure is eternal. The careless poet of Avon, was he troubled for his fame? Or the deep-mouthed chronicler of Paradise, heeded he the suffrage of his equals ? Mæonides took no thought, committing all his honors to the future, [From Truth in Things False.] SPIRITUAL FEELERS. · THE Soul hath its feelers, cobwebs floating on the wind, That catch events in their approach with sure and apt presentiment, [From Writing.] LETTERS. THEIR preciousness in absence is proved by the desire of their presence: When the despairing lover waiteth day after day, Looking for a word in reply, one word writ by that hand, And cursing bitterly the morn ushered in by blank disappointment: Or when the long-looked-for answer argueth a cooling friend, And the mind is plied suspiciously with dark inexplicable doubts, While thy wounded heart counteth its imaginary scars, And thou art the innocent and injured, that friend the capricious and in fault: Or when the earnest petition, that craveth for thy needs Unheeded, yea, unopened, tortureth with starving delay: Or when the silence of a son, who would have written of his welfare, Racketh a father's bosom with sharp-cutting fears: For a letter, timely writ, is a rivet to the chain of affection; And a letter, untimely delayed, is as rust to the solder. The pen, flowing in love, or dipped black in hate, Or tipped with delicate courtesies, or harshly edged with censure, Hath quickened more good than the sun, more evil than the sword, More joy than woman's smile, more woe than frowning fortune; And shouldst thou ask my judgment of that which hath most profit in the world, For answer take thou this, The prudent penning of a letter. |