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| ’T WAS 1 one of summer’s last and loveliest days, | |
| When at the dawn, with a congenial friend | |
| I rose to climb the mount, that with the gaze | |
| Of expectation high we long had kenn’d, | |
| While travelling toward it as our journey’s end:— | 5 |
| Height after height we reach’d that seem’d the last; | |
| But far above, where we must yet ascend, | |
| Another and another rose, till fast | |
| The sun began to sink ere all but one were past. | |
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| Upon that loftiest one awhile we stood | 10 |
| Silent with wonder and absorbing awe; | |
| A thousand peaks, the lowest crown’d with wood, | |
| The highest of bare rock at once we saw, | |
| In ranges spread till seeming to withdraw | |
| Far into heaven, and mix their softer blue; | 15 |
| While ranges near, as if in spite of law, | |
| With all wild shapes and grand fill’d up the view | |
| And o’er the deep dark gulf fantastic shadows threw. | |
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| Here billows heaved in one vast swell, and there | |
| In one long sweep, as on a stormy sea, | 20 |
| Drawn to a curling edge, seem’d held in air, | |
| Ready to move as from a charm set free, | |
| And roar, and dash, and sink, and cease to be; | |
| While firm and smooth as hewn of emerald rock, | |
| Below them rose to points of one proud tree, | 25 |
| Green pyramids of pine, that seem’d to mock | |
| In conscious safety proud, their vainly threaten’d shock. | |
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| Here while the sun yet shone, abysses vast | |
| Like openings into inner regions seem’d | |
| All objects fading, mingling, sinking fast, | 30 |
| Save few that shut up where the sun yet beam’d; | |
| But soon as his last rays around us stream’d | |
| Thick darkness wrapt the whole, o’er which the glow | |
| Of western skies in feeble flashes gleam’d, | |
| While bright from pole to pole extending slow | 35 |
| Along the wide horizon ere it sunk below. | |
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| ’T was midnight, when from our sequester’d bower | |
| I stole with sleepless eyes to gaze alone; | |
| For ’t is alone we feel in its full power, | |
| The enchantment o’er a scene so awful thrown:— | 40 |
| Through broken flying clouds the moon now shone, | |
| And light and shade cross’d mountain-top and vale; | |
| While with imparted motion, not their own, | |
| The heavens and earth to fancy seem’d to sail | |
| Through boundless space like her creation bright but frail. | 45 |
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| Ere long the clouds were gone, the moon was set; | |
| When deeply blue without a shade of gray, | |
| The sky was fill’d with stars that almost met, | |
| Their points prolong’d and sharpen’d to one ray; | |
| Through their transparent air the milky-way | 50 |
| Seem’d one broad flame of pure resplendent white, | |
| As if some globe on fire, turn’d far astray, | |
| Had cross’d the wide arch with so swift a flight, | |
| That for a moment shone its whole long track of light. | |
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| At length in northern skies, at first but small, | 55 |
| A sheet of light meteorous begun | |
| To spread on either hand, and rise and fall | |
| In waves, that slowly first, then quickly run | |
| Along its edge, set thick but one by one | |
| With spiry beams, that all at once shot high, | 60 |
| Like those through vapors from the setting sun; | |
| Then sidelong as before the wind they fly, | |
| Like streaking rain from clouds that flit along the sky. | |
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| Now all the mountain-tops and gulfs between | |
| Seem’d one dark plain; from forests, caves profound, | 65 |
| And rushing waters far below unseen, | |
| Rose a deep roar in one united sound, | |
| Alike pervading all the air around, | |
| And seeming e’en the azure dome to fill, | |
| And from it through soft ether to resound | 70 |
| In low vibrations, sending a sweet thrill | |
| To every finger’s end from rapture deep and still. | |
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| Spent with emotion, and to rest resign’d, | |
| A sudden sleep fell on me, and subdued | |
| With visions bright and dread my restless mind;— | 75 |
| Methought that in a realm of solitude, | |
| All indistinctly like the one just view’d, | |
| With guilt oppress’d and with foreboding gloom, | |
| My lonely way bewilder’d I pursued, | |
| Mid signs of terror that the day of doom, | 80 |
| And lovely nature’s last dissolving hour had come. | |
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| The sun and moon in depths of ether sunk | |
| Till half extinct, shed their opposing light | |
| In dismal union, at which all things shrunk;— | |
| Anon they both, like meteors streaming bright, | 85 |
| Ran down the sky and vanished—all was night; | |
| With that a groan as from earth’s centre rose, | |
| While o’er its surface ran, o’er vale and height, | |
| A waving as of woods when wild wind blows, | |
| A heaving as of life in its expiring throes. | 90 |
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| Far in the broad horizon dimly shone | |
| A flood of fire, advancing with a roar, | |
| Like that of ocean when the waves are thrown | |
| In nightly storms high on a rocky shore;— | |
| Spreading each way it came, and sweeping o’er | 95 |
| Woodlands like stubble, forests wide and tall | |
| In thick ranks falling, blooming groves before | |
| Its fury vanishing too soon to fall, | |
| And mountains melting down—one deluge covering all. | |
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| Before it, striking quick from cloud to cloud, | 100 |
| Stream’d its unearthly light along the sky, | |
| Flashing from all the swift wings of a crowd | |
| Of frighted birds at random soaring high, | |
| And from the faces of lost men that fly | |
| In throngs beneath, as back they snatch’d a look | 105 |
| Of horror at the billows rolling nigh, | |
| With thundering sound at which all nature shook, | |
| And e’en the strength of hope their sinking hearts forsook. | |
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| No more I saw, for while I thought to flee, | |
| What seem’d the swoon of terror held me fast, | 110 |
| My senses drowned, and set my fancy free, | |
| Waked not, but back to sleep unconscious cast | |
| My troubled spirit; one dark moment pass’d, | |
| And, all revived again, my dream went on; | |
| But in that interval what changes vast! | 115 |
| The earth and its lost multitudes were gone; | |
| A new creation bless’d eternity’s bright dawn. | |
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| Myself I found borne to a heavenly clime | |
| I knew not how, but felt a stranger there; | |
| Still the same being that I was in time, | 120 |
| E’en to my raiment; on the borders fair | |
| Of that blest land I stood in lone despair; | |
| Not its pure beauty and immortal bloom, | |
| Its firmament serene and balmy air, | |
| Nor all its glorious beings, broke the gloom | 125 |
| Of my foreboding thoughts, fix’d on some dreadful doom. | |
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| There walk’d the ransom’d ones of earth in white, | |
| As beautifully pure as new-fallen snow, | |
| On the smooth summit of some eastern height, | |
| In the first rays of morn that o’er it flow, | 130 |
| Nor less resplendent than the richest glow | |
| Of snow-white clouds, with all their stores of rain | |
| And thunder spent, roll’d up in volumes slow | |
| O’er the blue sky just clear’d from every stain, | |
| Till all the blaze of noon they drink and long retain. | 135 |
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| Safe landed on these shores, together hence | |
| That bright throng took their way to where insphered | |
| In a transparent cloud of light intense, | |
| With starry pinnacles above it reared, | |
| A city vast, the inland all appear’d, | 140 |
| With walls of azure, green and purple stone, | |
| All to one glassy surface smooth’d and clear’d, | |
| Reflecting forms of angel guards that shone | |
| Above the approaching host as each were on a throne. | |
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| And while that host moved onward o’er a plain | 145 |
| Of living verdure, oft they turn’d to greet | |
| Friends that on earth had taught them heaven to gain; | |
| Then hand in hand they went with quicken’d feet; | |
| And bright with immortality, and sweet | |
| With love ethereal, were the smiles they cast; | 150 |
| I only wander’d on with none to meet | |
| And call me dear, while pointing to the past, | |
| And forward to the joys that never reach their last. | |
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| I had not bound myself by any ties | |
| To that bless’d land; none saw me and none sought; | 155 |
| Nor any shunn’d, or from me turn’d their eyes; | |
| And yet such sense of guilt and conscience wrought, | |
| It seem’d that every bosom’s inmost thought | |
| Was fix’d on me; when back as from their view | |
| I shrunk, and would have fled or shrunk to nought, | 160 |
| As some I loved and many that I knew | |
| Pass’d on unmindful why or whither I withdrew. | |
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| Whereat of sad remembrances a flood | |
| Rush’d o’er my spirit, and my heart beat low | |
| As with the heavy gush of curdling blood:— | 165 |
| Soon left behind, awhile I follow’d slow, | |
| Then stopp’d and round me look’d, my fate to know, | |
| But look’d in vain;—no voice my doom to tell;— | |
| No arm to hurl me down the depths of wo;— | |
| It seem’d that I was brought to heaven to dwell | 170 |
| That conscience might alone do all the work of hell. | |
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| Now came the thought, the bitter thought of years | |
| Wasted in musings sad and fancies wild, | |
| And in the visionary hopes and fears | |
| Of the false feeling of a heart beguiled | 175 |
| By nature’s strange enchantment, strong and wild; | |
| Now with celestial beauty blooming round, | |
| I stood as on some naked waste exiled; | |
| From gathering hosts came music’s swelling sound, | |
| But deeper in despair my sinking spirits drown’d. | 180 |
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| At length methought a darkness as of death | |
| Came slowly o’er me, and with that I woke; | |
| Yet knew not in the first suspended breath | |
| Where I could be, so real seem’d the stroke, | |
| That in my dream all earthly ties had broke; | 185 |
| A moment more, and melting in a tide | |
| Of grateful fervor, how did I invoke | |
| Power from the Highest to leave all beside, | |
| And live but to secure the bliss my dream denied. | |
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| The day soon dawn’d, and I could not but view | 190 |
| Its purple tinge in heaven, and then its beams | |
| Revealing all around me, as they flew | |
| From peak to peak, and striking in soft gleams | |
| On the white mists that hung o’er winding streams | |
| Through trackless forests, and o’er clustering lakes | 195 |
| In valleys wide, where many a green height seems | |
| An isle above the cloud that round it breaks, | |
| As with the breeze it moves and its deep bed forsakes. | |
