ALL round the lake the wet woods shake | |
| From drooping boughs their showers of pearl; | |
| From floating skiff to towering cliff | |
| The rising vapors part and curl. | |
| The west-wind stirs among the firs | 5 |
| High up the mountain side emerging; | |
| The light illumes a thousand plumes | |
| Through billowy banners round them surging. | |
| |
| A glory smites the craggy heights: | |
| And in a halo of the haze, | 10 |
| Flushed with faint gold, far up, behold | |
| That mighty face, that stony gaze! | |
| In the wild sky upborne so high | |
| Above us perishable creatures, | |
| Confronting Time with those sublime, | 15 |
| Impassive, adamantine features. | |
| |
| Thou beaked and bald high front, miscalled | |
| The profile of a human face! | |
| No kin art thou, O Titan brow, | |
| To puny man’s ephemeral race. | 20 |
| The groaning earth to thee gave birth,— | |
| Throes and convulsions of the planet; | |
| Lonely uprose, in grand repose, | |
| Those eighty feet of facial granite. | |
| |
| Here long, while vast, slow ages passed, | 25 |
| Thine eyes (if eyes be thine) beheld | |
| But solitudes of crags and woods, | |
| Where eagles screamed and panthers yelled. | |
| Before the fires of our pale sires | |
| In the first log-built cabin twinkled, | 30 |
| Or redmen came for fish and game, | |
| That scalp was scarred, that face was wrinkled. | |
| |
| We may not know how long ago | |
| That ancient countenance was young; | |
| Thy sovereign brow was seamed as now | 35 |
| When Moses wrote and Homer sung. | |
| Empires and states it antedates, | |
| And wars, and arts, and crime, and glory; | |
| In that dim morn when man was born | |
| Thy head with centuries was hoary. | 40 |
| |
| Thou lonely one! nor frost, nor sun, | |
| Nor tempest leaves on thee its trace; | |
| The stormy years are but as tears | |
| That pass from thy unchanging face. | |
| With unconcern as grand and stern, | 45 |
| Those features viewed, which now survey us, | |
| A green world rise from seas of ice, | |
| And order come from mud and chaos. | |
| |
| Canst thou not tell what then befell? | |
| What forces moved, or fast or slow; | 50 |
| How grew the hills; what heats, what chills, | |
| What strange, dim life, so long ago? | |
| High-visaged peak, wilt thou not speak? | |
| One word, for all our learnéd wrangle! | |
| What earthquakes shaped, what glaciers scraped, | 55 |
| That nose, and gave the chin its angle? | |
| |
| Our pygmy thought to thee is naught, | |
| Our petty questionings are vain; | |
| In its great trance thy countenance | |
| Knows not compassion nor disdain. | 60 |
| With far-off hum we go and come, | |
| The gay, the grave, the busy-idle; | |
| And all things done to thee are one, | |
| Alike the burial and the bridal. | |
| |
| Thy permanence, long ages hence, | 65 |
| Will mock the pride of mortals still. | |
| Returning springs, with songs and wings | |
| And fragrance, shall these valleys fill; | |
| The free winds blow, fall rain or snow, | |
| The mountains brim their crystal beakers; | 70 |
| Still come and go, still ebb and flow, | |
| The summer tides of pleasure-seekers: | |
| |
| The dawns shall gild the peaks where build | |
| The eagles, many a future pair; | |
| The gray scud lag on wood and crag, | 75 |
| Dissolving in the purple air; | |
| The sunlight gleam on lake and stream, | |
| Boughs wave, storms break, and still at even | |
| All glorious hues the world suffuse, | |
| Heaven mantle earth, earth melt in heaven! | 80 |
| |
| Nations shall pass like summer’s grass, | |
| And times unborn grow old and change; | |
| New governments and great events | |
| Shall rise, and science new and strange; | |
| Yet will thy gaze confront the days | 85 |
| With its eternal calm and patience, | |
| The evening red still light thy head, | |
| Above thee burn the constellations. | |
| |
| O silent speech, that well can teach | |
| The little worth of words or fame! | 90 |
| I go my way, but thou wilt stay | |
| While future millions pass the same: | |
| But what is this I seem to miss? | |
| Those features fall into confusion! | |
| A further pace—where was that face? | 95 |
| The veriest fugitive illusion! | |
| |
| Gray eidolon! so quickly gone, | |
| When eyes that make thee onward move; | |
| Whose vast pretence of permanence | |
| A little progress can disprove! | 100 |
| Like some huge wraith of human faith | |
| That to the mind takes form and measure; | |
| Grim monolith of creed or myth, | |
| Outlined against the eternal azure! | |
| |
| O Titan, how dislimned art thou! | 105 |
| A withered cliff is all we see; | |
| That giant nose, that grand repose, | |
| Have in a moment ceased to be; | |
| Or still depend on lines that blend, | |
| On merging shapes, and sight, and distance, | 110 |
| And in the mind alone can find | |
| Imaginary brief existence! | |
| |
