Marjorie Allen Seiffert. Mountain Trails. Harriet Monroe, ed. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912-22

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912–22.

Mountain Trails

By Marjorie Allen Seiffert


I NIGHT stands in the valley.
Her head
Is bound with stars,
While Dawn, a grey-eyed nun,
Steals through the silent trees.	5
Behind the mountains
Morning shouts and sings
And dances upward.

II Down the eastern sky
A fleet of clouds drift toward the earth	10
Bearing a message of forgotten beauty.
Only the brooding mountains,
With robes of purple mist about their shoulders,
Can gaze into the glory
Of the sun.	15

III The peaks, even today, show finger-prints
Where God last touched the earth,
Before he set it joyously in space
Finding it good.

IV You, slender, shining—	20
You, downward leaping—
Born from silent snow
To drown at last in the blue, silent
Mountain lake—
You are not snow or water,	25
You are only a silver spirit
Singing.

V Sharp crags of granite
Pointing—threatening—
Thrust fiercely at me;	30
And near the edge their menace
Would whirl me down.

VI Climbing desperately toward the heights
I glance in terror behind me,
To be deafened—to be shattered—	35
By a thunderbolt of beauty.

VII The mountains hold communion:
They are priests, silent and austere;
They have come together
In a secret place	40
With unbowed heads.

VIII This hidden lake
Is a sapphire cup—
An offering clearer than wine,
Colder than tears.	45
The mountains hold it toward the sky
In silence.