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(From Ranolf and Amohia)
FROM the low sky-line of the hilly range | |
| Before them, sweeping down its dark-green face | |
| Into the lake that slumbered at its base, | |
| A mighty cataract, so it seemed, | |
| Over a hundred steps of marble streamed | 5 |
| And gushed, or fell in dripping overflow,— | |
| Flat steps, in flights half-circled,—row o’er row, | |
| Irregularly mingling side by side; | |
| They and the torrent-curtain wide, | |
| All rosy-hued, it seemed, with sunset’s glow.— | 10 |
| But what is this! no roar, no sound, | |
| Disturbs that torrent’s hush profound! | |
| The wanderers near and nearer come,— | |
| Still is the mighty cataract dumb! | |
| A thousand fairy lights may shimmer | 15 |
| With tender sheen, with glossy glimmer, | |
| O’er curve advanced and salient edge | |
| Of many a luminous water-ledge; | |
| A thousand slanting shadows pale | |
| May fling their thin transparent veil | 20 |
| O’er deep recess and shallow dent | |
| In many a watery stair’s descent: | |
| Yet, mellow-bright, or mildly dim, | |
| Both lights and shades, both dent and rim, | |
| Each wavy streak, each warm snow-tress, | 25 |
| Stand rigid, mute, and motionless! | |
| No faintest murmur, not a sound, | |
| Relieves that cataract’s hush profound; | |
| No tiniest bubble, not a flake | |
| Of floating foam, is seen to break | 30 |
| The smoothness where it meets the lake; | |
| Along that shining surface move | |
| No ripples; not the slightest swell | |
| Rolls o’er the mirror darkly green, | |
| Where, every feature limned so well, | 35 |
| Pale, silent, and serene as death, | |
| The cataract’s image hangs beneath | |
| The cataract, but not more serene, | |
| More phantom-silent, than is seen | |
| The white rose-hued reality above. | 40 |
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| They paddle past, for on the right | |
| Another cataract comes in sight; | |
| Another broader, grander flight | |
| Of steps, all stainless, snowy-bright! | |
| They land,—their curious way they track | 45 |
| Near thickets made by contrast black; | |
| And then that wonder seems to be | |
| A cataract carved in Parian stone, | |
| Or any purer substance known,— | |
| Agate or milk-chalcedony! | 50 |
| Its showering snow-cascades appear | |
| Long ranges bright of stalactite, | |
| And sparry frets and fringes white, | |
| Thick-falling, plenteous, tier o’er tier; | |
| Its crowding stairs, in bold ascent | 55 |
| Piled up that silvery-glimmering height, | |
| Are layers, they know, accretions slow | |
| Of hard silicious sediment: | |
| For as they gain a rugged road, | |
| And cautious climb the solid rime, | 60 |
| Each step becomes a terrace broad, | |
| Each terrace a wide basin brimmed | |
| With water, brilliant, yet in hue | |
| The tenderest, delicate harebell-blue | |
| Deepening to violet! Slowly climb | 65 |
| The twain, and turn from time to time | |
| To mark the hundred baths in view,— | |
| Crystalline azure, snowy-rimmed,— | |
| The marge of every beauteous pond | |
| Curve after curve, each lower beyond | 70 |
| The higher, outsweeping white and wide, | |
| Like snowy lines of foam that glide | |
| O’er level sea-sands lightly skimmed | |
| By thin sheets of the glistening tide. | |
| They climb those milk-white flats incrusted | 75 |
| And netted o’er with wavy ropes | |
| Of wrinkled silica. At last, | |
| Each basin’s heat increasing fast, | |
| The topmost step the pair surmount, | |
| And lo, the cause of all! Around, | 80 |
| The circling cliffs a crater bound,— | |
| Cliffs damp with dark-green moss, their slopes | |
| All crimson-stained with blots and streaks, | |
| White-mottled and vermilion-rusted; | |
| And in the midst, beneath a cloud | 85 |
| That ever upward rolls and reeks | |
| And hides the sky with its dim shroud, | |
| Look where upshoots a fuming fount,— | |
| Up through a blue and boiling pool | |
| Perennial,—a great sapphire steaming, | 90 |
| In that coralline crater gleaming. | |
| Upwelling ever, amethystal, | |
| Ebullient comes the bubbling crystal! | |
| Still growing cooler and more cool | |
| As down the porcelain stairway slips | 95 |
| The fluid flint, and slowly drips, | |
| And hangs each basin’s curling lips | |
| With crusted fringe each year increases, | |
| Thicker than shear-forgotten fleeces; | |
| More close and regular than rows, | 100 |
| Long rows of snowy trumpet-flowers | |
| Some day to hang in garden-bowers, | |
| When strangers shall these wilds enclose. | |
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