Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 / The advocate of Industry and Journal of Scientific, / Mechanical and Other Improvements

Published Weekly at 128 Fulton Street , ( Sun Building ,) New York .
BY MUNN & COMPANY.
RUFUS PORTER, EDITOR.
(Illustrated articles are marked with an asterisk.)
Descriptive: Opposite Harper's Ferry,--which is situated on a pleasant elevation at the junction of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers--a few rods north of Pinnacle Bluff, a flighty eminence on the Blue Ridge Mountains, stands a most singular formation of rock, known as 'Washington's Face'; and which, to a casualist void of imaginative powers, is easily recognized if pointed out by a guide; but to a close observer, however, with common discernable perception, it presents at first sight a most striking and correct resemblance of the great original . From midway the bridge which crosses the Potomac, the countenance and contour of the face to me , appeared discriminatingly perfect, and constrained me to look upon it as one of the most wonderful, and the noblest work of revealed nature.
In the high barren cliffs of the Blue Mountain Ridge, That frightfully hang o'er the trestle-built bridge, Juts out into space a huge rocky bluff, Which the elements rudely left broken and rough. Near this, stands a bust so exquisitely fair, That the chisel of art would be uselessness there! For nature wrought well till the model was done--An impress on stone of our Great Washington. The Earth born from chaos at some mighty shock, Left the image to rest on the high mountain rock, On a turret-like peak, in the heavens above, As a sentinel over the country we love: Where the sunbeam could linger till daylight had fled, Where the bright stars of night, form a crown o'er its head; And where, through the greenwood, the faintest breeze creeps, To sigh for the Hero, who deathlessly sleeps. There it stands like a giant in storm and in calm, Like the Hero in battle, no foeman could harm! And commandingly looks with a Patriot's pride, On the wild mountain stream of Potomac's fast tide, Whose waters swell on in the valley between, Through the vast hilly regions and forests of green; O'er a rock-bottomed track, to the blue-bosomed sea, From its struggles to rest, like our sire of the free. Stand up there in might, till the bright sun shall die, Till the stars glimmer out their light in the sky, And the moon shall no longer lend beauty or light, But all shall again be dark chaos and night,-- Till then, let its base be the tall craggy steep, Where rocks are o'er moss-grown, and ivy-vines creep; With the Heaven's wide canopy over its head, An immortal image of greatness that's dead.