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| OREGON midnight with a round moon. Mellow | |
| On savage steeps sublime a stillness argent | |
| Along the lone Columbia; every billow | |
| Where the moon’s slumber breathes a smoothèd pillow; | |
| As calm the caves in rock-columnar shadows, | 5 |
| Blacker for fir and hemlock. Islands, meadows, | |
| Wave in the low winds, all the alluvial margent | |
| Fragrant with fringe of Cottonwood and willow. | |
| A lovelier witchery than hers of Endor, | |
| Than Samuel’s form a phantom more tremendous; | 10 |
| For, vague in shroud-like mantle, misty white, | |
| Looms hoar Saint Helen’s with a ghostly splendor: | |
| The apparition of some mount stupendous | |
| Belonging to a world pre-Adamite! | |
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| Look; use that one sense only; naught to listen | 15 |
| Hast thou in the sweet calm. Superbly flowing | |
| By piny banks basaltiform, romantic, | |
| Lo! the smoke-purple river amethystine; | |
| While the sun rises a discoloring mist in | |
| With lustre like a full-blown rose gigantic. | 20 |
| High up in whiter light three snow-peaks glisten. | |
| A reflex, like a levelled obelisk, | |
| Lies pointing to the sun’s purpureal disk; | |
| Like rubies lucid through the thin wave glowing | |
| Along: ’t is magical: her treasures shine, | 25 |
| At flow of morning’s oriental fountains, | |
| Revealed by some Enchantress of the Mine | |
| To Genii of the Stream and of the Mountains! | |
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| Rolled up the huge gorge long a billowy roar | |
| Has shaken the mountain firs with storms of sound; | 30 |
| But now the Cascades, as the bluff ye round, | |
| Burst forth like a magnificent meteor, | |
| Grand the white turbulence, the foamy smother, | |
| And beautiful the blue-green stream behind, | |
| Made less crystálline by nor wave nor wind, | 35 |
| As if—the one contiguous to the other— | |
| The calm slept dead and the storm surged on ocean. | |
| Careers, like scud before a hurricane, | |
| The vast foam,—the great mountains whirl,—your brain | |
| Reels with the rushing parallactic motion. | 40 |
| Look up, where flows the river gentliest, | |
| There is a charm of peace—lo! all again is rest! | |
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| Proud Bird, with no compeer and no companion, | |
| From where snow-summits highest are and hoarest | |
| To where the slow swell lifts the ocean-kelp, | 45 |
| The river rolled in cataract through the cañon | |
| Or seaward floating wrecks of vast fir forest, | |
| High o’er the raven’s croak, the sea-gull’s yelp, | |
| Bald Eagle of the Oregon, thou soarest! | |
| And thou that here thy tides and billows pourest, | 50 |
| Calm and as strong as Heaven, sublime Pacific, | |
| Here where the freighted inland waters launch— | |
| Where’er the bird screams or the salt air pipes, | |
| Ocean and Eagle, ye are Freedom’s types; | |
| When all her broad domain is beatific, | 55 |
| And her uncrimsoned conquering bears the olive branch! | |
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