Where Hudson's wave o'er silvery sands
Winds through the hills afar,
Old Crow-nest like a monarch stands,
Crowned with, a single star.
And there amid the billowy swells
Of rock-ribbed, cloud-capped earth,
My fair and gentle Ida dwells,
A nymph of mountain birth.
The snow-flake that the cliff receives—
The diamonds of the showers—
Spring's tender blossoms, buds, and leaves—
The sisterhood of flowers—
Morn's early beam, eve's balmy breeze—
Her purity define;—
But Ida's dearer far than these
To this fond breast of mine.
* * * * *
=George D. Prentice, 1802-1869.= (Manual, p. 487.)
From "The Mammoth Cave."
=352.= CONTRAST OF NATURE WITHOUT.
All day, as day is reckoned on the earth,
I've wandered in these dim and awful aisles,
Shut from the blue and breezy dome of heaven,
… And now
I'll sit me down upon yon broken rock,
To muse upon the strange and solemn things
Of this mysterious realm.
All day my steps
Have been amid the beautiful, the wild,
The gloomy, the terrific; crystal founts
Almost invisible in their serene
And pure transparency, high pillared domes
With stars and flowers, all fretted like the halls
Of Oriental monarchs—rivers dark,
And drear, and voiceless, as Oblivion's stream,
That flows through Death's dim vale of silence,—gulfs
All fathomless, down which the loosened rock
Plunges, until its far-off echoes come
Fainter and fainter, like the dying roll
Of thunders in the distance.
… Beautiful
Are all the thousand snow-white gems that lie
In these mysterious chambers, gleaming out
Amid the melancholy gloom, and wild
These rocky hills and cliffs, and gulfs, but far
More beautiful and wild, the things that greet
The wanderer in our world of light—the stars
Floating on high, like islands of the blest,—
The autumn sunsets glowing like the gate
Of far-off Paradise; the gorgeous clouds
On which the glories of the earth and sky
Meet, and commingle; earth's unnumbered flowers,
All turning up their gentle eyes to heaven;
The birds, with bright wings glancing in the sun,
Filling the air with rainbow miniatures;
The green old forests surging in the gale;
The everlasting mountains, on whose peaks
The setting sun burns like an altar-flame.
* * * * *
=Charles Constantine Pise, 1802-1866.= (Manual, p. 532.)
From "The Pleasures of Religion."