Читать книгу Mountain Idylls, and Other Poems - Alfred Castner King - Страница 6

The crevice deep and inaccessible;

Fissure and rent, where the intrusive dike's

Creative and destructive agency

Leaves many an enduring monument

Of metamorphic and eruptive power;

Of molten deluge, and volcanic flood;

Fracture and break, the silent stories tell

Of dire convulsion in the ages past;

Of subterranean catastrophe,

And cataclysm of internal force.

The trachyte wall, beseamed and battle scarred; The porphyritic tower and citadel; The granite ramparts and embattlements Of nature's fort, impregnable and wild, Stand as a symbol of eternal strength, And hurl a challenge to the elements!

Cañons of startling and appalling depths,

With caverns, vast and gloomy, which would seem

Meet for the haunt of centaur or of gnome;

The gorgon and the labyrinthodon;

The clumsy mammoth and the dinosaur;

Or all gigantic and unwieldy shapes

Which earth has seen in the mysterious past,

Would seem in more accord and harmony With such surroundings than the puny form Of insignificant, conceited man.

And interspersed amid these solemn peaks

Lie many a pleasant vale and grassy slope,

Besprinkled with the drooping columbine,

And fragrant growths of all harmonious tints,

Whose variegated colors punctuate

Grandeur with beauty, and fearless, bloom

In the forbidding shadow of the cliffs,

And to the margin of the snowy combs

Which still resist the sun's persuasive ray.

A lakelet, cool, pellucid and serene,

Fed by the drippings from eternal snows,

Lies like a mirror 'neath a frowning cliff,

Or as a gem, majestically ensconced

In diadem of crag and pinnacle.

Down towards the distant valley's sultry clime,

Both solitary, and in straggling groups; In solid phalanx, rigid and compact; In labyrinth of branches interspread, Impervious to the rain and midday sun; In form spontaneous, without regard To law of uniformity, there stand In silent awe, or whispering to the breeze, The sombre fir and melancholy pine. And many a denuded avenue Of varying and considerable width, Cut through the growth of balsam, spruce and pine, Which stands erect and proud on either hand, Attests the swift and desolating force Of fearful, devastating avalanche.