Motionless pillars of the brazen heaven—
Their bases on the mountains—their white tops
Shining in the far ether....
The poet never wearies of this majestic pageantry of the natural world. In ‘The Firmament,’ in ‘The Hurricane’ (imitated from Heredia), in ‘Monument Mountain,’ his chief thought is to translate the reader to his own lofty vantage-ground.
But Nature is not merely a spectacle, it has a power to heal and invigorate. Life loses its pettiness when one leaves the city and seeks the forest. The holy men who hid themselves ‘deep in the woody wilderness’ perhaps did not well—
But let me often to these solitudes
Retire, and in thy presence reassure
My feeble virtue. Here its enemies,
The passions, at thy plainer footsteps shrink
And tremble and are still.