Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
America: Vols. XXV–XXIX. 1876–79.
Among the Mountains in Georgia
By Henry R. Jackson (1820–1898)Y
I see your peaks on every side arise;
Their summits roll beneath the giddy sight,
Like ocean billows heaved among the skies.
In wild magnificence upon them lies
The primal forest, kindling in the glow
Of this mild autumn sun with golden dyes,
While, in his slanting ray, their shadows grow
Broad o’er the paradise of vale and wood below.
They show no footstep of an elder race;
No human hand has ever turned their sod,
Or heaved their massive granite from its place:
The green banks of their floods bear not a trace
Of pomp and power, which have come and gone,
And left their crumbling ruins to deface
The virgin earth. Here Nature rules alone;
The beauty of the hill and valley is her own.
Aught of the simple people, who have made
Their habitations by the streams that flow
So fresh and stainless from the forest shade;
Who built their council fires on hill and glade,
And in yon pleasant valleys, by the fall
Of crystal founts, perchance, their dead have laid,—
But for the names of mountain, river, cataract,—all
Significant of thought, and sweetly musical.