Читать книгу The Passing of the Storm, and Other Poems - Alfred Castner King - Страница 5

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Reflecting, in their crystal snows,

The glittering jewels of the night,

The mountains lay in calm repose

Slumbering 'neath their robes of white.

The stars grew dim,—a film instead,

The twinkling heavens overspread,

Through which their eyes essayed to peer,

Each moment less distinct and clear,

Till, when the stellar beacons failed,

A darkness unrelieved, prevailed.

Out of the ambient depths of gloom,

Bereft of its accustomed bloom,

Came day-break, comfortless and gray.

Sped the nocturnal shades away,

Unveiling, with their winged retreat,

A twilight sad and incomplete.

Reluctantly, as dawn aspired,

The shadows lingered, then retired

As vanquished armies often yield

Upon a well-contested field,

And sullenly retrace their course

Before an overwhelming force.

Within the east no purple light

Proclaimed the passing of the night;

No crimson blush appeared to warn

The landscape of returning morn.

Discarding all the gorgeous dyes,

Wherewith the sunset tints the skies,

And mingling with the azure blue,

The warp and woof of sober hue;

The fairies of the air, I wist,

Had spun a silvery web of mist,

Whose texture, ominous and gray,

Obscured the glories of the day.

Such was the dreary winter's day,

Which dawned with dull and leaden sky;

No cheerful penetrating ray

Flashed from the sun's resplendent eye.

In vain, through rift and orifice,

He strove with radiant beam to kiss

Each mountain peak and dizzy height,

Apparelled in their garbs of white,

And crown each brow, so bleak and cold,

With burnished diadem of gold.

Ascending in aërial flight,

The wheel of fire did not appear,

To dissipate the fogs of night

And clarify the atmosphere.

Seeking with fervent ray and fierce,

The canopy of cloud to pierce,

The orb of day, stripped of his flame,

A circle, ill-defined, became,

As through the ever-thickening haze,

His feeble outline met the gaze.

This faded till his glowing face

Left no suggestive spot or trace,

No corollary on the pall

Which settled and pervaded all.

As stormy cowls their summits hid,

In turret, tower and pyramid,

Of stately and majestic mien,

Was nature's architecture seen.

From yawning chasm and abyss,

Rose minaret and precipice,

Carved by the tireless hand of time,

In forms fantastic, yet sublime,

While spires impregnable and high,

Were profiled on the lowering sky.

Exceeding the tremendous height

Of brother peaks, on left and right,

In his commanding station placed,

The giant of the rocky waste

With awe-inspiring aspect stood,

The sentry of the solitude,

Guarding the mountainous expanse

With his imposing battlements.

In rock-ribbed armor panoplied,

With rugged walls on every side,

Beseamed with countless scars and rents,

From combat with the elements,

He towered with mute and massive form,

A challenge to the gathering storm.

This overshadowing mountain peak

In solemn silence seemed to speak

A prophecy of arctic doom;

As in his frigid splendor dressed,

He reared aloft his frozen crest,

Surmounted by a snowy plume.

His wrinkled and forbidding brow

A sombre shadow seemed to throw

O'er other crags as wild and stern,

Which frowned defiance in return.

The wind, lugubrious and sad,

In doleful accents, soft and low,

Mourned through the dismal forests, clad

In weird habiliments of snow,

As if, forsooth, the sylvan ghosts

Had mobilized in pallid hosts,

To haunt their rugged solitudes,

The spectres of departed woods.

And with uninterrupted flow

The streamlet, underneath the snow,

Answered the wind's despondent moan

With plaint of gurgling monotone;

Or, locked in winter's stern embrace,

No longer trickled in its bed,

But found a frigid resting place

In stationary ice, instead.

The crystal snowflakes gently fell,

Enrobing mountain, plain and dell,

In mantle spotless and complete,

As nature in her winding sheet.

Layer upon layer fell fast and deep

Till every cliff, abrupt and steep,

Was crowned with coronal of white.

Capricious gusts, which whirl and sift,

Built comb and overhanging drift,

From feathery flakes so soft and light.

More thickly flew the snow and fast;

The wind developed and the blast

Soon churned the tempest, till the air

Seemed but a white and whirling glare,

Through which the penetrating eye

No shape nor contour might descry.

The poor belated traveller,

Who braved the rigor of that day,

Might thank his bright protecting star,—

If orbs of pure celestial ray,

Far in the scintillating skies,

Preside o'er human destinies,—

That he, bewildered and distressed,

Had warded off exhaustion's rest,

And in that maze of pine and fir

Escaped an icy sepulchre.

When driving snows accumulate,

They yield to the tremendous weight.

And down the mountain's rugged sides

The mass with great momentum slides,

Cleaving the fragile spruce and pine,

Which stand in its ill-fated line,

As bearded grain, mature and lithe,

Goes down before the reaper's scythe.

Or, when the cyclone's baleful force,

In flood of atmospheric wrath,

Pursues its devastating course,

Leaving but ruin in its path;

Despoiling in a moment's span

The most exalted works of man;

Or waters, suddenly set free,

When some black thunder cloud is rent,

Rush down a wild declivity

With irresistible descent,

Depositing on every hand

A layer of sediment and sand;

With swift and spoliating flow,

Uprooting many a noble tree,

To strew the desert wastes below

With scattered drift-wood and debris;

Such is the dreadful avalanche,

Which rends the forest, root and branch.

From dangers in such varied form,

And the discomforts of the storm,

Small wonder 'twas the mountaineer

Left not his fireside's ruddy cheer;

But from behind the bolted door

Discerned the tempest's strident roar,

Or heard the pendent icicle,

Which, from the eaves, in fragments fell,

As some more formidable blast

In paroxysmal fury passed.

It shook with intermittent throes,

Of boisterous, spasmodic power,

A most substantial hut, which rose,

As summer breeze sways grass or flower

And e'en the dull immobile ground

Trembled in sympathy profound.

Such was the fury of the storm,

As if the crystal flakes had met

With militating hosts, to swarm

In siege about its parapet.

When every rampant onslaught failed,

The blast in wanton frenzy wailed.

As if with unspent rage the wind

Felt much disgruntled and chagrined,

And though of nugatory force,

Could vent its spleen with accents hoarse.

As some beleaguered tower of old

Besieged by warriors stern and bold,

Who dashed against its walls of stone,

Which were not swayed nor overthrown;

As vicious strokes delivered well,

Innocuous and futile fell.

Then watched the walls withstand the strain,

And cursed and gnashed their teeth in vain.

Beneath a massive pinnacle,

Whose weird, forbidding shadows fell,

And gulch and forest overcast

With mantle ominous and vast,

Nestling amid the spruce and pine,

Which fringe the edge of timberline,

This miner's cabin, quaint and rude,

From the surrounding forest hewed,

With primitive, yet stable form,

Withstood the onslaught of the storm,

And at the entrance of a dell

Stood as a rustic sentinel.

Beneath a pine's protecting skirt,

It reared its modest roof of poles,

Laid close, then overlaid with dirt,

To cover up the cracks and holes;

The intervals between the logs

Were daubed with mud from mountain bogs.

The ground did service as a floor

In this, as many huts before;

So beaten down beneath the tread,

It more resembled tile instead.

The plastic clay, compressed and sleek,

Was level and as hard as brick.

Protruding boulders, smooth and bare,

Exposed their faces here and there;

And with their surfaces displayed,

A primitive mosaic made.

And, terminating in a stack,

Some feet above the cabin's roof,

The fireplace, comfortless and black,

Arose the dingy form uncouth.

This object of depressing gloom,

Built in the corner of the room,

When filled with lurid tongues of flame,

A cheerful cynosure became.

The furnishings within were crude;

A table fastened to the wall

Had been with some exertion hewed

From aspen timbers straight and tall,

And was, in lieu of table legs,

Supported by protruding pegs.

A cracker box, with shelves inside,

The leading corner occupied,

And made an ample cupboard there,

Where tin supplanted chinaware.

A frying pan, which from a nail

Suspended, dripped a greasy trail.

Framed from the hemlock's poles and boughs,

The rustic bunks within the house

Were not elaborate affairs;

While boxes filled the place of chairs.

Tacked on the unpretentious wall

Were advertisements, great and small,

While lithograph and crayon scenes,

Clipped from the standard magazines,

Comprised a mimic gallery,

Which broke the wall's monotony.

No carpets were upon that floor,

But at the bottom of the door

The rug, against its yawning crack,

Consisted of a gunny-sack.

Nor was there lock upon that door,

The guardian of sordid pelf;

The traveller, distressed and sore,

Might enter there and help himself.

Within this weather-beaten hut

Of logs, by many a tempest tried,

With doors and windows closely shut,

To keep the genial warmth inside;

A group of hardy mountaineers,

Blockaded by the winter's snow,

Sat by the fireside's ruddy glow.

Some old, and old beyond their years,

As disappointments, toil and strife,

Which constitute the miner's life,

Must operate with process sure,

Toward age, unduly premature;

For years, in stern privation spent,

Are traced in seam and lineament,

Which gives the patriarchal face

Its rugged dignity and grace.

exceeding the tremendous height

"Exceeding the tremendous height

Of brother peaks, on left and right."

See page 19

Although by fond illusions led,

Through phantasies of empty air,

Which mark an ultimate despair,

The miner still sees hope ahead.

The prospector could never cope

With dangers and realities,

But for the visionary hope

Which both deceives and mollifies,

Alluring him with siren song

Her vague uncertain paths along.

Yet some, this stalwart group among,

Were adolescent,—even young.

For hearts, which youthful breasts conceal,

Oft burn with energetic zeal,

To ope, with labor's patient key,

The mountain's hidden treasury.

Most furiously it blew and snowed,

Most cheerily the firelight glowed,

And as the forkèd tongues of flame,

In fierce combustion, writhed and burned,

Nor moment's space remained the same,

The conversation swayed and turned.

For tales were told of avalanche,

Of army scenes, of mine and ranch,

Of wily politician's snares,

Of gold excitements, smallpox scares,

Of England's debt and grizzly bears.

When all but three their stories told

Of tropic heat, or arctic cold,

The conversation dragged at length,

An interim for future strength.

Outspoke a voice: "Let Uncle Jim

Some past experience relate,

For Fate has kindly granted him,

At least, diversity of fate."