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| DREAD, desolate Mount! when first I gazed at thee | |
| Lifting thy shadowy cone across the sea, | |
| Thou seemedst a remembered picture drawn | |
| By boyhood’s vision in some Southern dawn, | |
| Twin spirit with the purple clouds that rest | 5 |
| In hazy light above thy towering crest. | |
| But when I climbed thy bare and burning side, | |
| And felt the scorching of that fiery tide | |
| Bubbling from thy hot lips, and saw the blight | |
| Of thy dread power spread through the dusky night, | 10 |
| Far down the black slopes to the ocean skiffs,— | |
| When I beheld the drear and savage cliffs | |
| Towering around me black and sulphur-drenched, | |
| The burning cracks whose heat is never quenched, | |
| I knew thou wast that desolating fount | 15 |
| Whose fearful flowing centuries might recount, | |
| Whose fiery surge beat down the marble pride | |
| Of stainless fanes that slept too near thy side, | |
| When fated cities of renownéd fame | |
| Fluttered like moths toward thy devouring flame. | 20 |
| |
| Motionless Victor! Lord of fiery doom! | |
| On thy dark helmet waves thy smoky plume; | |
| Wrapt in thy purple like a Syrian king, | |
| While crouches at thy feet the shrinking Spring, | |
| Thy fallen archangel’s throne befits thee,—thou | 25 |
| Who canst not bless, but curse. Thy blasted brow | |
| Scowls with dull eye of hate that nightly broods | |
| On dire events in thy drear solitudes. | |
| Tireless thou burnest on from age to age. | |
| No winter’s rains, though yearly they assuage | 30 |
| Thy hot cheeks, where the lava tear-drops run | |
| Down the black furrows,—no joy-giving sun | |
| Of balmy spring clothing thy ruggedness | |
| With colors of all depth and tenderness,— | |
| No clouds of summer smiling on thy sleep,— | 35 |
| No autumn vintage round thy fire-cloven steep,— | |
| Have charmed away the awful mystery | |
| That burns within a heart no eye can see. | |
| In the bright day thou mak’st the blue heavens dun, | |
| Blotting with blasphemous smoke the blessed sun. | 40 |
| No calmest starlit night can still thy curse | |
| Breathed upward through the silent universe. | |
| |
| Last night we saw thee shrouded in a cloak | |
| Of dull gray rain-clouds. From thy crater broke | |
| Swift blazing spasms of flame that glimmered through | 45 |
| The awful gloom of mist whose pallid hue | |
| Half hid thy form, now dark, and flashing now | |
| Like the dread oracles on Sinai’s brow. | |
| Prophetic mount! Thou seemedst then to be | |
| Wrapt in a vision of futurity, | 50 |
| Fearfully whispering words of joy or moan, | |
| Whose sense was hidden in thy heart alone. | |
| |
| Nor seer alone of future days o’ercast, | |
| But true historian of the blighted past, | |
| Buried beneath thy feet thou chainest deep | 55 |
| Treasures of beauty in enchanted sleep: | |
| Temples and streets and quaintly painted halls, | |
| Vases and cups for antique festivals, | |
| Fair statues in whose undulating line | |
| The Grecian artist lavished dreams divine; | 60 |
| Altars that burned to gods of mighty name, | |
| Until thy greater sacrificial flame | |
| Swallowed the lesser. Princely art and power | |
| Sank blood-warm to its grave in that dark hour | |
| When thou, wild despot, even to the sea | 65 |
| Whose fevered waves shrank from the fear of thee | |
| Meeting thy fire-kiss, didst send forth thy hosts, | |
| Cloud-myrmidons of death, flooding the coasts | |
| That smiled around thy blue enamelled bay. | |
| |
| Years rolled. The cities in their dungeons lay | 70 |
| Embalmed in lovely death. Long ages crept. | |
| Flowers and luxuriant vines above them slept, | |
| And still not half the wealth beneath that lies | |
| Revisits the sweet light of summer skies. | |
| So thou, stern chronicler, dialest thy dates, | 75 |
| Not by the ephemeral growth and change of states, | |
| But thunderous blasts upheaving from below, | |
| That melt to mist the winter’s hoarded snow, | |
| By thy deep beds of fire, thy strata old, | |
| And the slow creep of vegetable mould. | 80 |
| |
| Yet fearful as thou towerest, seen so near, | |
| In thy environment of blight and fear, | |
| Beautiful art thou burning from afar | |
| In liquid fire,—as though a melting star | |
| Had fallen upon thee from the sky profound, | 85 |
| And streamed adown thy sides which, gemmed around, | |
| Sparkle like some dark Abyssinian queen | |
| Robed in her amethyst and ruby sheen. | |
| E’en now I see thee nightly from this bower | |
| Where the red rose and the white orange-flower | 90 |
| Mingle their odors. Looking o’er the sea, | |
| Thy shadowy cone of solemn mystery | |
| Shoots downward in the waves a softened gleam, | |
| Until, by beauty lulled, I can but dream | |
| Of thee as of each gentle lovely thing | 95 |
| That in my path lies daily blossoming. | |
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