Читать книгу The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 53, March, 1862 - Various - Страница 3

Once more, O Mountains of the North, unveil

Your brows, and lay your cloudy mantles by!

And once more, ere the eyes that seek ye fail,

Uplift against the blue walls of the sky

Your mighty shapes, and let the sunshine weave

Its golden net-work in your belting woods,

Smile down in rainbows from your falling floods,

And on your kingly brows at morn and eve

Set crowns of fire! So shall my soul receive

Haply the secret of your calm and strength,

Your unforgotten beauty interfuse

My common life, your glorious shapes and hues

And sun-dropped splendors at my bidding come,

Loom vast through dreams, and stretch in billowy length

From the sea-level of my lowland home!

They rise before me! Last night’s thunder-gust

Roared not in vain: for, where its lightnings thrust

Their tongues of fire, the great peaks seem so near,

Burned clean of mist, so starkly bold and clear,

I almost pause the wind in the pines to hear,

The loose rock’s fall, the steps of browsing deer.

The clouds that shattered on yon slide-worn walls

And splintered on the rocks their spears of rain

Have set in play a thousand waterfalls,

Making the dusk and silence of the woods

Glad with the laughter of the chasing floods

And luminous with blown spray and silver gleams,

While, in the vales below, the dry-lipped streams

Sing to the freshened meadow-lands again.

So, let me hope, the battle-storm that beats

The land with hail and fire may pass away

With its spent thunders at the break of day,

Like last night’s clouds, and leave, as it retreats,

A greener earth and fairer sky behind,

Blown crystal-clear by Freedom’s Northern wind!