View From The Top Of Black Comb
THIS Height a ministering Angel might select:
For from the summit of BLACK COMB (dread name
Derived from clouds and storms!) the amplest range
Of unobstructed prospect may be seen
That British ground commands:--low dusky tracts,
Where Trent is nursed, far southward! Cambrian hills
To the south-west, a multitudinous show;
And, in a line of eye-sight linked with these,
The hoary peaks of Scotland that give birth
To Tiviot's stream, to Annan, Tweed, and Clyde:--
Crowding the quarter whence the sun comes forth
Gigantic mountains rough with crags; beneath,
Right at the imperial station's western base
Main ocean, breaking audibly, and stretched
Far into silent regions blue and pale;--
And visibly engirding Mona's Isle
That, as we left the plain, before our sight
Stood like a lofty mount, uplifting slowly
(Above the convex of the watery globe)
Into clear view the cultured fields that streak
Her habitable shores, but now appears
A dwindled object, and submits to lie
At the spectator's feet.--Yon azure ridge,
Is it a perishable cloud? Or there
Do we behold the line of Erin's coast?
Land sometimes by the roving shepherdswain
(Like the bright confines of another world)
Not doubtfully perceived.--Look homeward now!
In depth, in height, in circuit, how serene
The spectacle, how pure!--Of Nature's works,
In earth, and air, and earth-embracing sea,
A revelation infinite it seems;
Display august of man's inheritance,
Of Britain's calm felicity and power!
poem by William Wordsworth
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Sonnet 11
Which are the clouds, and which the mountains? See,
They mix and melt together! Yon blue hill
Looks fleeting as the vapors which distill
Their dews upon its summit, while the free
And far-off clouds, now solid, dark, and still,
An aspect wear of calm eternity.
Each seems the other, as our fancies will --
The cloud a mount, the mount a cloud, and we
Gaze doubtfully. So everywhere on earth,
This foothold where we stand with slipping feet,
The unsubstantial and substantial meet,
And we are fooled until made wise by Time.
Is not the obvious lesson something worth,
Lady? or have I wov'n an idle rhyme?
poem by Henry Timrod
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Heat
From plains that reel to southward, dim,
The road runs by me white and bare;
Up the steep hill it seems to swim
Beyond, and melt into the glare.
Upward half-way, or it may be
Nearer the summit, slowly steals
A hay-cart, moving dustily
With idly clacking wheels.
By his cart's side the wagoner
Is slouching slowly at his ease,
Half-hidden in the windless blur
Of white dust puffiing to his knees.
This wagon on the height above,
From sky to sky on either hand,
Is the sole thing that seems to move
In all the heat-held land.
Beyond me in the fields the sun
Soaks in the grass and hath his will;
I count the marguerites one by one;
Even the buttercups are still.
On the brook yonder not a breath
Disturbs the spider or the midge.
The water-bugs draw close beneath
The cool gloom of the bridge.
Where the far elm-tree shadows flood
Dark patches in the burning grass,
The cows, each with her peaceful cud,
Lie waiting for the heat to pass.
From somewhere on the slope near by
Into the pale depth of the noon
A wandering thrush slides leisurely
His thin revolving tune.
In intervals of dreams I hear
The cricket from the droughty ground;
The grasshoppers spin into mine ear
A small innumerable sound.
I lift mine eyes sometimes to gaze:
The burning sky-line blinds my sight:
The woods far off are blue with haze:
The hills are drenched in light.
And yet to me not this or that
Is always sharp or always sweet;
In the sloped shadow of my hat
I lean at rest, and drain the heat;
Nay more, I think some blessèd power
Hath brought me wandering idly here:
In the full furnace of this hour
My thoughts grow keen and clear.
poem by Archibald Lampman
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First Verses
TRANSLATION FROM THE ENEID, BOOK I.
THE god looked out upon the troubled deep
Waked into tumult from its placid sleep;
The flame of anger kindles in his eye
As the wild waves ascend the lowering sky;
He lifts his head above their awful height
And to the distant fleet directs his sight,
Now borne aloft upon the billow's crest,
Struck by the bolt or by the winds oppressed,
And well he knew that Juno's vengeful ire
Frowned from those clouds and sparkled in that fire.
On rapid pinions as they whistled by
He calls swift Zephyrus and Eurus nigh
Is this your glory in a noble line
To leave your confines and to ravage mine?
Whom I--but let these troubled waves subside--
Another tempest and I'll quell your pride!
Go--bear our message to your master's ear,
That wide as ocean I am despot here;
Let him sit monarch in his barren caves,
I wield the trident and control the waves
He said, and as the gathered vapors break
The swelling ocean seemed a peaceful lake;
To lift their ships the graceful nymphs essayed
And the strong trident lent its powerful aid;
The dangerous banks are sunk beneath the main,
And the light chariot skims the unruffled plain.
As when sedition fires the public mind,
And maddening fury leads the rabble blind,
The blazing torch lights up the dread alarm,
Rage points the steel and fury nerves the arm,
Then, if some reverend Sage appear in sight,
They stand--they gaze, and check their headlong flight,--
He turns the current of each wandering breast
And hushes every passion into rest,--
Thus by the power of his imperial arm
The boiling ocean trembled into calm;
With flowing reins the father sped his way
And smiled serene upon rekindled day.
poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes
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Ode to Borrowdale
IN CUMBERLAND.
Hail , Derwent's beauteous pride!
Whose charms rough rocks in threatening grandeur guard,
Whose entrance seems to mortals barred,
But to the Genius of the storm thrown wide.
He on thy rock's dread height,
Reclined beneath his canopy of clouds,
His form in darkness shrouds,
And frowns as fixt to keep thy beauties from the sight.
But rocks and storms are vain:
Midst mountains rough and rude
Man's daring feet intrude,
Till, lo! upon the ravished eye
Burst thy clear stream, thy smiling sky,
Thy wooded valley, and thy matchless plain.
Bright vale! the Muse's choicest theme,
My morning thought, my midnight dream;
Still memory paints thee, smiling scene,
Still views the robe of purest green,
Refreshed by beauty-shedding rains,
Which wraps thy flower-enamelled plains;
Still marks thy mountains' fronts sublime,
Force graces from the hand of time;
Still I thy rugged rocks recall,
Which seem as nodding to their fall,
Whose wonders fixed my aching sight,
Till terror yielded to delight,
And my surprises, pleasures, fears,
Were told by slow delicious tears.
But suddenly the smiling day
That cheered the valley, flies away;
The wooded rocks, the rapid stream,
No longer boast the noon-tide beam.
But storms athwart the mountains sail,
And darkly brood o'er Borrowdale.
The frightened swain his cottage seeks,
Ere the thick cloud in terror speaks:--
And see, pale lightning flashes round!
While as the thunder's awful sound
On Echo's pinion widely flies,
Yon cataract's roar unheeded dies;....
And thee, Sublimity! I hail,
Throned on the gloom of Borrowdale.
But soon the thunder dies away,
The flash withdraws its fearful ray;
Again upon the silver stream
Waves in bright wreaths the noon-tide beam.
O scene sequestered, varied, wild,
Scene formed to soothe Affliction's child,
How blest were I to watch each charm
That decks thy vale in storm or calm!
To see Aurora's hand unbind
The mists by night's chill power confined;
Upon the mountain's dusky brow
Then mark their colours as they flow,
Gliding the colder West to seek,
As from the East day's splendours break.
Now the green plain enchants the sight,
Adorned with spots of yellow light;
While, by its magic influence, shade
With contrast seems each charm to aid,
And clothes the woods in deeper dyes,
To suit the azure-vested skies.
While, lo! the lofty rocks above,
Where proudly towers the bird of Jove;
See from the view yon radiant cloud
His broad and sable pinions shroud,
Till, as he onward wings his flight,
He vanishes in floods of light;
Where feathered clouds on æther sail,
And glittering hang o'er Borrowdale.....
Or, at still midnight's solemn hour,
When the dull bat revolves no more,
In search of nature's awful grace,
I'd go, with slow and cautious pace,
Where the loud torrent's foaming tide
Lashes the rock's uneven side,....
That rock which, o'er the stream below
Bending its moss-clad crumbling brow,
Makes pale with fear the wanderer's cheek,
Nor midnight's silence fails to break
By fragments from its aged head,
Which, rushing to the river's bed,
Cause, as they dash the waters round,
A dread variety of sound;
While I the gloomy grandeur hail,
And awe-struck rove through Borrowdale.
Yes, scene sequestered, varied, wild,
So form'd to soothe Affliction's child,
Sweet Borrowdale! to thee I'll fly,
To hush my bosom's ceaseless sigh.
If yet in Nature's store there be
One kind heart-healing balm for me,
Now the long hours are told by sighs,
And sorrow steals health's crimson dyes,--
If aught can smiles and bloom restore,
Ah! surely thine's the precious power!
Then take me to thy world of charms,
And hush my tortured breast's alarms;
Thy scenes with unobtrusive art
Shall steal the mourner from her heart,....
The hands in sorrow claspt unclose,
Bid her sick soul on Heaven repose,
And, soothed by time and nature, hail
Health, peace, and hope in Borrowdale.
poem by Amelia Opie
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Psalm 19 part 1
The books of nature and scripture.
For a Lord's-day morning
Behold, the lofty sky
Declares its Maker God,
And all his starry works on high
Proclaim his power abroad.
The darkness and the light
Still keep their course the same;
While night to day, and day to night,
Divinely teach his name.
In every diff'rent land
Their general voice is known;
They show the wonders of his hand,
And orders of his throne.
Ye British lands, rejoice,
Here he reveals his word;
We are not left to nature's voice,
To bid us know the Lord.
His statutes and commands
Are set before our eyes;
He puts his gospel in our hands,
Where our salvation lies.
His laws are just and pure,
His truth without deceit,
His promises for ever sure,
And his rewards are great.
[Not honey to the taste
Affords so much delight,
Nor gold that has the furnace passed
So much allures the sight.
While of thy works I sing,
Thy glory to proclaim,
Accept the praise, my God, my King
In my Redeemer's name.]
poem by Isaac Watts
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The Ports of the Open Sea
Down here where the ships loom large in
The gloom when the sea-storms veer,
Down here on the south-west margin
Of the western hemisphere,
Where the might of a world-wide ocean
Round the youngest land rolls free—
Storm-bound from the world’s commotion,
Lie the Ports of the Open Sea.
By the bluff where the grey sand reaches
To the kerb of the spray-swept street,
By the sweep of the black sand beaches
From the main-road travellers’ feet,
By the heights like a work Titanic,
By a bluff lined coast volcanic
Lie the Ports of the wild South-east.
By the steeps of the snow-capped range,
By the scarped and terraced hills—
Far away from the swift life-changes,
From the wear of the strife that kills—
Where the land in the Spring seems younger
Than a land of the Earth might be—
Oh! the hearts of the rovers hunger
For the Ports of the Open Sea.
But the captains watch and hearken
For a sign of the South Sea wrath—
Let the face of the South-east darken,
And they turn to the ocean path.
Ay, the sea-boats dare not linger,
Whatever the cargo be;
When the South-east lifts a finger
By the Ports of the Open Sea.
South by the bleak Bluff faring,
North where the Three Kings wait,
South-east the tempest daring—
Flight through the storm-tossed strait;
Yonder a white-winged roamer
Struck where the rollers roar—
Where the great green froth-flaked comber
Breaks down on a black-ribbed shore.
For the South-east lands are dread lands
To the sailor in the shrouds,
Where the low clouds loom like headlands,
And the black bluffs blur like clouds.
When the breakers rage to windward
And the lights are masked a-lee,
And the sunken rocks run inward
To a Port of the Open Sea.
But oh! for the South-east weather—
The sweep of the three-days’ gale—
When, far through the flax and heather,
The spindrift drives like hail.
Glory to man’s creations
That drive where the gale grows gruff,
When the homes of the sea-coast stations
Flash white from the dark’ning bluff!
When the swell of the South-east rouses
The wrath of the Maori sprite,
And the brown folk flee their houses
And crouch in the flax by night,
And wait as they long have waited—
In fear as the brown folk be—
The wave of destruction fated
For the Ports of the Open Sea.
Grey cloud to the mountain bases,
Wild boughs that rush and sweep;
On the rounded hills the tussocks
Like flocks of flying sheep;
A lonely storm-bird soaring
O’er tussock, fern and tree;
And the boulder beaches roaring
The Hymn of the Open Sea.
poem by Henry Lawson
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Kara
Chequered with sunshine and shade—the umbrage of white clouds in motion—
Rearing their summits to Heaven, broken like waves on their strands,
Northward and southward and seaward the mountains arise from the ocean—
Poised on a height above all, Kara, the beautiful, stands.
Kara, whose mountain the ranges lie under in turbulent surges—
Billows of purple and blue that stretch from her base to the sea—
Kara that knoweth the breath of the storm-wind, the sound of his dirges
Sweeping her gorges and clefts, or sighing to river and tree.
High as an eagle’s nest, crowning a summit storm-beaten and hoary,
Framed in a setting of green which sombre tints deepen and tone,
Gleam all the station’s white roofs, refracting the Summer-god’s glory:
Ribbons of silvery light surmounting gray masses of stone.
Beauty is round it, and peace; and silence and sunlight enfold it,
Clothing with mystical charm summit and forest and scar,
Fair as a dream of delight it seemeth to eyes that behold it,
Roofed by the azure of heaven, with sheen of blue waters afar.
Dreamily drifteth the day in solitudes far from life’s clamour;
Soundeth no murmur of tongues, echo of hurrying feet;
Soundeth no blast of the furnace, nor anvil that rings with the hammer,
Thunder of horses and wheels, traffic, and roar of the street.
Only a silence supreme, where Nature seems buried in slumbers,
Save for the bell-bird’s clear note, or murmuring cadence of bees,
Or sough of the wind as it chanteth its paean in musical numbers
Soft to the pine-crests aloft—monarchs of leaf-laden seas.
poem by George Essex Evans
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Peace
I
IN EXCELSIS
Two dwellings, Peace, are thine.
One is the mountain-height,
Uplifted in the loneliness of light
Beyond the realm of shadows,--fine,
And far, and clear,--where advent of the night
Means only glorious nearness of the stars,
And dawn, unhindered, breaks above the bars
That long the lower world in twilight keep.
Thou sleepest not, and hast no need of sleep,
For all thy cares and fears have dropped away;
The night's fatigue, the fever-fret of day,
Are far below thee; and earth's weary wars,
In vain expense of passion, pass
Before thy sight like visions in a glass,
Or like the wrinkles of the storm that creep
Across the sea and leave no trace
Of trouble on that immemorial face,--
So brief appear the conflicts, and so slight
The wounds men give, the things for which they fight.
Here hangs a fortress on the distant steep,--
A lichen clinging to the rock:
There sails a fleet upon the deep,--
A wandering flock
Of snow-winged gulls: and yonder, in the plain,
A marble palace shines,--a grain
Of mica glittering in the rain.
Beneath thy feet the clouds are rolled
By voiceless winds: and far between
The rolling clouds new shores and peaks are seen,
In shimmering robes of green and gold,
And faint aerial hue
That silent fades into the silent blue.
Thou, from thy mountain-hold,
All day, in tranquil wisdom, looking down
On distant scenes of human toil and strife,
All night, with eyes aware of loftier life,
Uplooking to the sky, where stars are sown,
Dost watch the everlasting fields grow white
Unto the harvest of the sons of light,
And welcome to thy dwelling-place sublime
The few strong souls that dare to climb
The slippery crags and find thee on the height.
II
DE PROFUNDIS
But in the depth thou hast another home,
For hearts less daring, or more frail.
Thou dwellest also in the shadowy vale;
And pilgrim-souls that roam
With weary feet o'er hill and dale,
Bearing the burden and the heat
Of toilful days,
Turn from the dusty ways
To find thee in thy green and still retreat.
Here is no vision wide outspread
Before the lonely and exalted seat
Of all-embracing knowledge. Here, instead,
A little garden, and a sheltered nook,
With outlooks brief and sweet
Across the meadows, and along the brook,--
A little stream that little knows
Of the great sea towards which it gladly flows,--
A little field that bears a little wheat
To make a portion of earth's daily bread.
The vast cloud-armies overhead
Are marshalled, and the wild wind blows
Its trumpet, but thou canst not tell
Whence the storm comes nor where it goes.
Nor dost thou greatly care, since all is well;
Thy daily task is done,
And though a lowly one,
Thou gavest it of thy best,
And art content to rest
In patience till its slow reward is won.
Not far thou lookest, but thy sight is clear;
Not much thou knowest, but thy faith is dear;
For life is love, and love is always near.
Here friendship lights the fire, and every heart,
Sure of itself and sure of all the rest,
Dares to be true, and gladly takes its part
In open converse, bringing forth its best:
Here is Sweet music, melting every chain
Of lassitude and pain:
And here, at last, is sleep, the gift of gifts,
The tender nurse, who lifts
The soul grown weary of the waking world,
And lays it, with its thoughts all furled,
Its fears forgotten, and its passions still,
On the deep bosom of the Eternal Will.
poem by Henry Van Dyke
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The Visible Creation
The God of nature and of grace
In all His works appears;
His goodness through the earth we trace,
His grandeur in the spheres.
Behold this fair and fertile globe,
By Him in wisdom plann'd;
'Twas He who girded, like a robe,
The ocean round the land.
Life to the firmament your eye
Thither His path pursue;
His glory, boundless as the sky,
O'erwhelms the wond'ring view.
He bows the heavens - the mountains stand
A highway for their God;
He walks amidst the desert land,
'Tis Eden where He trod!
The forests in His strength rejoice;
Hark! on the evening breeze,
As once of old, the Lord God's voice,
Is heard among the trees.
Here on the hills He feeds His herds.
His flocks on yonder plains;
His praise is warbled by the birds;
Oh could we catch their strains!
Mount with the lark and bear our song
Up to the gates of light;
Or, with the nightingale prolong
Our numbers through the night!
In every stream His bounty flows,
Diffusing joy and wealth;
In every breeze His spirit blows
The breath of life and health.
His blessings fall in plenteous showers
Upon the lap of earth,
That teems with foliage, fruit, and flowers,
And rings with infant mirth.
If God hath made this world so fair,
Where sin and death abound,
How beautiful beyond compare
Will paradise be found!
poem by James Montgomery
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The Nympholept
There was a boy -- not above childish fears --
With steps that faltered now and straining ears,
Timid, irresolute, yet dauntless still,
Who one bright dawn, when each remotest hill
Stood sharp and clear in Heaven's unclouded blue
And all Earth shimmered with fresh-beaded dew,
Risen in the first beams of the gladdening sun,
Walked up into the mountains. One by one
Each towering trunk beneath his sturdy stride
Fell back, and ever wider and more wide
The boundless prospect opened. Long he strayed,
From dawn till the last trace of slanting shade
Had vanished from the canyons, and, dismayed
At that far length to which his path had led,
He paused -- at such a height where overhead
The clouds hung close, the air came thin and chill,
And all was hushed and calm and very still,
Save, from abysmal gorges, where the sound
Of tumbling waters rose, and all around
The pines, by those keen upper currents blown,
Muttered in multitudinous monotone.
Here, with the wind in lovely locks laid bare,
With arms oft raised in dedicative prayer,
Lost in mute rapture and adoring wonder,
He stood, till the far noise of noontide thunder,
Rolled down upon the muffled harmonies
Of wind and waterfall and whispering trees,
Made loneliness more lone. Some Panic fear
Would seize him then, as they who seemed to hear
In Tracian valleys or Thessalian woods
The god's hallooing wake the leafy solitudes;
I think it was the same: some piercing sense
Of Deity's pervasive immanence,
The Life that visible Nature doth indwell
Grown great and near and all but palpable . . .
He might not linger, but with winged strides
Like one pursued, fled down the mountain-sides --
Down the long ridge that edged the steep ravine,
By glade and flowery lawn and upland green,
And never paused nor felt assured again
But where the grassy foothills opened. Then,
While shadows lengthened on the plain below
And the sun vanished and the sunset-glow
Looked back upon the world with fervid eye
Through the barred windows of the western sky,
Homeward he fared, while many a look behind
Showed the receding ranges dim-outlined,
Highland and hollow where his path had lain,
Veiled in deep purple of the mountain rain.
poem by Alan Seeger
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A National Song For Australia Felix
Dark over the face of Nature sublime!
Reign'd tyranny, warfare, and every crime;
The world a desert—no oasis green
A man-loving soul on its surface had seen;
Then mercy above a mandate sent forth
An Eden to form—a refuge for worth.
From the ocean it came, with halo so bright,
Want, strife, and oppression were lost in its sight.
Chorus
First isle of the sea—brightest gem of the earth
In thee every virtue and joy shall have birth.
A land of the just, the brave, and the free,
Australia the happy, thou ever shalt be.
So earth in the flood no place for rest gave,
At length a green isle arose from the wave;
The dove o'er the waters the olive branch bore,
To show that one spot was cover'd no more;
Australia thus shall be sounded by fame,
And Europe shall echo the glorious name;
The brave, wise, and good, wherever oppress'd,
Shall fly to thy shores as a haven of rest.
Chorus: First isle of the sea, &c.
Land of the orange, fig, olive, and vine;
'Midst earth's fairest daughters the chaplet is thine;
No sick'ning vapours are borne on thy air,
But fragrance and melody twine sweetly there;
Thy ever-green fields proclaim plenty and peace,
If man doth his part, heaven sends the increase;
No customs to fetter, no enemy near,
Independence thy sons for ever must cheer.
poem by Andrew Barton Paterson
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Noon On The Barrier Ranges
THE saltbush steeped in drowsy stillness lies,
The mulga seems to swoon,
A hawk hangs poised within the burning skies,
And it is noon.
The river-gums, their leaf-pores closed, distil
No fresh and cooling breath;
I stand upon an old hard-bitten hill,
Wide plains beneath.
Here stood tall mountains when the world was young,
Their peaks uplifted high;
Here was the song of many waters sung
In days gone by.
The monarch Change, whose will no power withstands
Vast lord of might
At work by night and day, with tireless hands
Planed down their height.
With such to see, and seeing ponder on,
Such mighty ruin wrought,
Why should we wonder at proud Babylon
Brought down to nought?
Be not amazed, though princes be displaced
And kingdoms overcast;
Are empires more than mountains, basalt-based,
That they should last?
A sense of things unreal, seen in dream,
Is over plain and heights —
The time-worn rocks, the crumbled earth, the gleam
Of mirage lights;
The horseman riding with a slackened rein
Alone, a silent man;
The weird, dust-sprites that whirl across the plain
A little span;
The earth-hued lizard, on the sun-baked rock
Stretched out in stirless sleep;
The far-off drover and his dusty flock
Of travelling sheep;
The hidden birds that break the hush, and call,
And sink again to rest,
The dust-storm, hanging, like a crimson shawl,
Within the west;
The white quartz glittering on the umber track,
The claypans cracked and bare;
The poised hawk, hanging like a menace black
In middle air;
The wonder of the spacious plain and sky,
The splendour of it all;
The all that is not I — so wide, so high,
And I so small!
The sun swings on, and up the western verge
The great shawl-cloud spreads wide,
Till sky and plain in oneness meet and merge,
Fierce-lit, red-dyed.
A wind, hell-hot and surged with fury, whips
The trees upon its path,
And all is sudden turmoil and eclipse,
And cries of wrath.
A choking darkness draws across the sun
And clouds his splendour o'er,
And though but half his pilgrimage be done,
'Tis noon no more.
poem by Roderic Quinn
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Address To The Sunset
Exquisite stillness! What serenities
Of earth and air! How bright atop the wall
The stonecrop’s fire and beyond the precipice
How huge, how hushed the primrose evenfall!
How softly, too, the white crane voyages
Yon honeyed height of warmth and silence,
whence
He can look down on islet, lake and shore
And crowding woods and voiceless promontories
Or, further gazing, view the magnificence
Of cloud- like mountains and of mountainous cloud
Or ghostly wrack below the horizon rim
Not even his eye has vantage to explore.
Now, spirit, find out wings and mount to him,
Wheel where he wheels, where he is soaring soar.
Hang where now he hangs in the planisphere -
Evening’s first star and golden as a bee
In the sun’s hair - for happiness is here!
poem by Robert Nichols
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The Nocturne: Address to the Sunset
Exquisite stillness! What serenities
Of earth and air! How bright atop the wall
The stonecrop’s fire and beyond the precipice
How huge, how hushed the primrose evenfall!
How softly, too, the white crane voyages
Yon honeyed height of warmth and silence,
whence
He can look down on islet, lake and shore
And crowding woods and voiceless promontories
Or, further gazing, view the magnificence
Of cloud- like mountains and of mountainous cloud
Or ghostly wrack below the horizon rim
Not even his eye has vantage to explore.
Now, spirit, find out wings and mount to him,
Wheel where he wheels, where he is soaring soar.
Hang where now he hangs in the planisphere -
Evening’s first star and golden as a bee
In the sun’s hair - for happiness is here!
poem by Robert Nichols
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The Rivers Edge
While drifting on these ebony waves of silk,
the air is cooler here,
where my feet aren't touching the ground
A dreary archway of trees surround,
the entrance to the woods upon me.
My sight has seemed to wake the leaves,
slightly shaking the trees.
Waking the birds,
but not a sound I can hear.
And with every passing cloud.
I feel as if time has been sealed on this scene.
For a moment,
this light feels serene.
And this picture,
is oh so crystal clear.
And the sky,
so divine in color,
a dark blue,
so distinct,
this perfect hue.
Has captured the breeze,
the open air,
the contrast of the trees.
The oh so green,
and violet flowers
line the ridge.
This distinct feeling
of my soul releasing
into this sight
off the rivers
edge.
poem by Joseph Ostapiuk
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A Golden Sphere
A golden sphere is lifting up so slowly in the east,
The eye is looking towards it, and seeing such a feast,
Blazing with bands of colour, and giving a wondrous heat,
A view that to each observer, is something so complete.
The sphere goes on its journey, and starts slowly rising,
In different coloured guises, it begins such advertising,
Above the trees and fields, of this silent waiting land,
With a spectacle so splendid, so magnificent and grand.
A whole range of hues are seen, within this fiery glow,
Changing as the hours pass by, it then starts sinking low,
And if seen in splendid glory, is a wonderful imposing sight,
Out to the west, where it disappears into our moonlit night.
poem by Ernestine Northover
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The Passing Show
I
I know not if it was a dream. I viewed
A city where the restless multitude,
Between the eastern and the western deep
Had reared gigantic fabrics, strong and rude.
Colossal palaces crowned every height;
Towers from valleys climbed into the light;
O'er dwellings at their feet, great golden domes
Hung in the blue, barbarically bright.
But now, new-glimmering to-east, the day
Touched the black masses with a grace of gray,
Dim spires of temples to the nation's God
Studding high spaces of the wide survey.
Well did the roofs their solemn secret keep
Of life and death stayed by the truce of sleep,
Yet whispered of an hour when sleepers wake,
The fool to hope afresh, the wise to weep.
The gardens greened upon the builded hills
Above the tethered thunders of the mills
With sleeping wheels unstirred to service yet
By the tamed torrents and the quickened rills.
A hewn acclivity, reprieved a space,
Looked on the builder's blocks about his base
And bared his wounded breast in sign to say:
'Strike! 'tis my destiny to lodge your race.
''Twas but a breath ago the mammoth browsed
Upon my slopes, and in my caves I housed
Your shaggy fathers in their nakedness,
While on their foemen's offal they caroused.'
Ships from afar afforested the bay.
Within their huge and chambered bodies lay
The wealth of continents; and merrily sailed
The hardy argosies to far Cathay.
Beside the city of the living spread-
Strange fellowship!-the city of the dead;
And much I wondered what its humble folk,
To see how bravely they were housed, had said.
Noting how firm their habitations stood,
Broad-based and free of perishable wood-
How deep in granite and how high in brass
The names were wrought of eminent and good,
I said: 'When gold or power is their aim,
The smile of beauty or the wage of shame,
Men dwell in cities; to this place they fare
When they would conquer an abiding fame.'
From the red East the sun-a solemn rite-
Crowned with a flame the cross upon a height
Above the dead; and then with all his strength
Struck the great city all aroar with light!
II
I know not if it was a dream. I came
Unto a land where something seemed the same
That I had known as 'twere but yesterday,
But what it was I could not rightly name.
It was a strange and melancholy land,
Silent and desolate. On either hand
Lay waters of a sea that seemed as dead,
And dead above it seemed the hills to stand.
Grayed all with age, those lonely hills-ah me,
How worn and weary they appeared to be!
Between their feet long dusty fissures clove
The plain in aimless windings to the sea.
One hill there was which, parted from the rest,
Stood where the eastern water curved a-west.
Silent and passionless it stood. I thought
I saw a scar upon its giant breast.
The sun with sullen and portentous gleam
Hung like a menace on the sea's extreme;
Nor the dead waters, nor the far, bleak bars
Of cloud were conscious of his failing beam.
It was a dismal and a dreadful sight,
That desert in its cold, uncanny light;
No soul but I alone to mark the fear
And imminence of everlasting night!
All presages and prophecies of doom
Glimmered and babbled in the ghastly gloom,
And in the midst of that accursèd scene
A wolf sat howling on a broken tomb.
poem by Ambrose Bierce
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The Future
A wanderer is man from his birth.
He was born in a ship
On the breast of the river of Time;
Brimming with wonder and joy
He spreads out his arms to the light,
Rivets his gaze on the banks of the stream.
As what he sees is, so have his thoughts been.
Whether he wakes,
Where the snowy mountainous pass,
Echoing the screams of the eagles,
Hems in its gorges the bed
Of the new-born clear-flowing stream;
Whether he first sees light
Where the river in gleaming rings
Sluggishly winds through the plain;
Whether in sound of the swallowing sea--
As is the world on the banks,
So is the mind of the man.
Vainly does each, as he glides,
Fable and dream
Of the lands which the river of Time
Had left ere he woke on its breast,
Or shall reach when his eyes have been closed.
Only the tract where he sails
He wots of; only the thoughts,
Raised by the objects he passes, are his.
Who can see the green earth any more
As she was by the sources of Time?
Who imagines her fields as they lay
In the sunshine, unworn by the plough?
Who thinks as they thought,
The tribes who then roam'd on her breast,
Her vigorous, primitive sons?
What girl
Now reads in her bosom as clear
As Rebekah read, when she sate
At eve by the palm-shaded well?
Who guards in her breast
As deep, as pellucid a spring
Of feeling, as tranquil, as sure?
What bard,
At the height of his vision, can deem
Of God, of the world, of the soul,
With a plainness as near,
As flashing as Moses felt
When he lay in the night by his flock
On the starlit Arabian waste?
Can rise and obey
The beck of the Spirit like him?
This tract which the river of Time
Now flows through with us, is the plain.
Gone is the calm of its earlier shore.
Border'd by cities and hoarse
With a thousand cries is its stream.
And we on its breast, our minds
Are confused as the cries which we hear,
Changing and shot as the sights which we see.
And we say that repose has fled
For ever the course of the river of Time.
That cities will crowd to its edge
In a blacker, incessanter line;
That the din will be more on its banks,
Denser the trade on its stream,
Flatter the plain where it flows,
Fiercer the sun overhead.
That never will those on its breast
See an ennobling sight,
Drink of the feeling of quiet again.
But what was before us we know not,
And we know not what shall succeed.
Haply, the river of Time--
As it grows, as the towns on its marge
Fling their wavering lights
On a wider, statelier stream--
May acquire, if not the calm
Of its early mountainous shore,
Yet a solemn peace of its own.
And the width of the waters, the hush
Of the grey expanse where he floats,
Freshening its current and spotted with foam
As it draws to the Ocean, may strike
Peace to the soul of the man on its breast--
As the pale waste widens around him,
As the banks fade dimmer away,
As the stars come out, and the night-wind
Brings up the stream
Murmurs and scents of the infinite sea.
poem by Matthew Arnold
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The Blind Summit
[A Viennese gentleman, who had climbed the Hoch-König
without a guide, was found dead, in a sitting posture, near the
summit, upon which he had written, 'It is cold, and clouds shut
out the view.'-
Vide
the
Daily News
of September 10, 1891.]
So mounts the child of ages of desire,
Man, up the steeps of Thought; and would behold
Yet purer peaks, touched with unearthlier fire,
In sudden prospect virginally new;
But on the lone last height he sighs: ''Tis cold,
And clouds shut out the view.'
Ah, doom of mortals! Vexed with phantoms old,
Old phantoms that waylay us and pursue,-
Weary of dreams,-we think to see unfold
The eternal landscape of the Real and True;
And on our Pisgah can but write: ''Tis cold,
And clouds shut out the view.'
poem by William Watson
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The Hill-Top
The burly driver at my side,
We slowly climbed the hill,
Whose summit, in the hot noontide,
Seemed rising, rising still.
At last, our short noon-shadows bid
The top-stone, bare and brown,
From whence, like Gizeh's pyramid,
The rough mass slanted down.
I felt the cool breath of the North;
Between me and the sun,
O'er deep, still lake, and ridgy earth,
I saw the cloud-shades run.
Before me, stretched for glistening miles,
Lay mountain-girdled Squam;
Like green-winged birds, the leafy isles
Upon its bosom swam.
And, glimmering through the sun-haze warm,
Far as the eye could roam,
Dark billows of an earthquake storm
Beflecked with clouds like foam,
Their vales in misty shadow deep,
Their rugged peaks in shine,
I saw the mountain ranges sweep
The horizon's northern line.
There towered Chocorua's peak; and west,
Moosehillock's woods were seem,
With many a nameless slide-scarred crest
And pine-dark gorge between.
Beyond them, like a sun-rimmed cloud,
The great Notch mountains shone,
Watched over by the solemn-browed
And awful face of stone!
'A good look-off!' the driver spake;
'About this time, last year,
I drove a party to the Lake,
And stopped, at evening, here.
'T was duskish down below; but all
These hills stood in the sun,
Till, dipped behind yon purple wall,
He left them, one by one.
'A lady, who, from Thornton hill,
Had held her place outside,
And, as a pleasant woman will,
Had cheered the long, dull ride,
Besought me, with so sweet a smile,
That--though I hate delays--
I could not choose but rest awhile,--
(These women have such ways!)
'On yonder mossy ledge she sat,
Her sketch upon her knees,
A stray brown lock beneath her hat
Unrolling in the breeze;
Her sweet face, in the sunset light
Upraised and glorified,--
I never saw a prettier sight
In all my mountain ride.
'As good as fair; it seemed her joy
To comfort and to give;
My poor, sick wife, and cripple boy,
Will bless her while they live!'
The tremor in the driver's tone
His manhood did not shame
'I dare say, sir, you may have known'--
He named a well-known name.
Then sank the pyramidal mounds,
The blue lake fled away;
For mountain-scope a parlor's bounds,
A lighted hearth for day!
From lonely years and weary miles
The shadows fell apart;
Kind voices cheered, sweet human smiles
Shone warm into my heart.
We journeyed on; but earth and sky
Had power to charm no more;
Still dreamed my inward-turning eye
The dream of memory o'er.
Ah! human kindness, human love,--
To few who seek denied;
Too late we learn to prize above
The whole round world beside!
poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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