ON THE JELLICO-SPUR.
To my Friend, John Fox, Jr.
YOU remember, the deep mist,—
Climbing to the Devil's Den—
Blue beneath us in the glen
And above us amethyst,
Throbbed and circled and away
Thro' the wild-woods opposite,
Torn and shattered, morning-lit,
Scurried up a dewy gray.
Vague as in Romance we saw
From the fog one riven trunk,
Its huge horny talons shrunk,
Thrust a hungry dragon's claw.
And we climbed two hours thro'
The dawn-dripping Jellicoes,
To that wooded rock that shows
Undulating peaks of blue:
The vast Cumberlands that sleep,
Weighed with soaring forests, far
To the concave welkin's bar,
Leagues on leagues of purple sweep.
Range exalted over range
Billowed their enormous spines,
And we heard the priestly pines
Hum the wisdom of their change.
We were sons of Nature then;
She had taken us to her,
Closer drawn by brier and burr,
There on lonely Devil's Den.
We were pupils of her moods:
Taught the beauties of her loins
In those bloom-anointed coignes,—
Love in her eternal woods:
How she bore or flower or bud;
Pithed the wiry sapling-oak;
In the long vine zeal awoke
Aye to climb a leafy flood.
Her waste fantasies of birth:
Sponge-like exudations fair—
Dainty fungi everywhere
Bulging from the loamy earth.
Coral-vegetable things;
Crystals clamily exhaled;
Bulbous, marble-ribbed and scaled,
Vip'rous colored; then close rings
Of the Indian Pipe that cleft
Pink and white the woodland lax,—
Blossoms of a natural wax
The brown mountain-fairies left.
We on that parched precipice,
Stretched beneath the chestnuts' burrs,
Breathed the balsam of the firs,
Felt the blue sky like a kiss.
Soft that heaven; stainless as
The grand woodlands lunging on,
Wound majestic in the sun,
Or as our devotion was!
Freedom sat there cragged we saw,
Freedom whom hoarse forests sang;
Heaven-browed her eyes, whence sprang
Audience august with law.
Wildernesses, from her hips
Sprung the giant forests there,
Tossed the cataracts from her hair,
Thunders lightened from her lips.
Oft some scavenger, with vane
Motionless, above we knew
Wheeled thro' altitudes of blue
By his rapid shadow's stain.
Or some cloud of sunny white,—
Puffed a lazy drift of pearl,—
Balmy breezes o'er would whirl
Shot with coruscating light.
So we dreamed an hour upon
Those warm rocks, dry, lichen-scabbed.
Lounged beneath long leaves that dabbed
At us coins of shade and sun.
Then arose and down some gorge
Made a bowldered torrent broad
The hurled pathway of our road
Tumbled down the mountain large.
At that farm-house, which you know,
Where old-fashioned flowers spun
Gay rag-carpets in the sun,
By green apple-boughs built low,
Rested from our hot descent;
One deep draught of cider cool,
Unctuous, our fierce veins to dull
At old Hix's eloquent....
On Wolf Mountain died the light;
A colossal blossom, rayed
With rent petaled clouds that played
'Round a calyxed fury bright.
Down the moist mint-scented vale
To the mining camp we turned,
Thro' the twilight faint discerned
With its crowded cabins pale.
Ah! those nights!—We wandered forth
On some shadow-haunted path
When the moon was late and rathe
The large stars; sowed south and north,
Clustered bursting heavens down:
And the milky zodiac,
Rolled athwart the belted black,
Myriad-million-moted shone.
And in dreams we sauntered till
In the valley pale beneath,
From a dew-drop's vapored breath
To faint ghosts, there gathered still,
Grave creations weird of mist:
Then we knew the moonrise near,
As with necromance the air
Pulsed to pearl and amethyst.
Shrilled the insects of the dusk,
Grated, buzzed and strident sung
Till each leaf seemed tuned and strung
For high Pixy music brusque.
Stealing steps and stealthy sighs
As of near unhallowed things,
Rustled hair or fluttered wings,
Seemed about us; then the eyes
Of plumed phantom warriors
Burned mesmeric from some bush
Mournful in the goblin hush,
Then materialized to stars.
Mantled mists like ambushed braves,
Chiefed by some swart Blackfoot tall,
Stole along each forest wall—
Phosphorescent moony waves.
Then the moon rose; from some cup
Each hill's bowl,—magnetic shine,
Mist and silence poured like wine,—
Brimmed a monster goblet up.
Ingot from lost orient mines,
Delved by humpbacked gnomes of Night,
Full her orb loomed, nacreous white,
O'er Pine Mountain's druid pines.
As thro' fragmentary fleece
Her circumference polished broke,
Orey-seamed, about us woke
Myths of Italy and Greece.
Then—a chanson serenade—
You, rich-voiced, to your guitar
To our goddess in that star
Sang "Ne Tempo" from the glade.