| |
| IN the stately Indian Pass, | |
| From my fount of shadowy glass, | |
| I struggle along in hollow song | |
| On my blind and caverned way. | |
| Sharp, splintered crags ascend, | 5 |
| Wild firs above me bend, | |
| And I leap and dash with many a flash | |
| To find the welcome day. | |
| |
| The lean wolf laps my flow; | |
| In my pointed pools below, | 10 |
| The grand gray eagle’s tawny eye | |
| Like lightning fires the gloom. | |
| Not oft is the warbling bird | |
| In my jagged cradle heard, | |
| For I am the child of the savage and wild, | 15 |
| Not pet of the sun and bloom. | |
| |
| I smite, in headlong shocks, | |
| Roots clutching the ragged rocks, | |
| And the blocks of my sable basins | |
| And the chasms my fury ploughs, | 20 |
| Where the raven, as o’er he flies, | |
| Sees the frown of his deepest dyes, | |
| As the murkiest pall of the forest | |
| Is flung from the dungeon-boughs. | |
| |
| Old Whiteface cleaves apart | 25 |
| In dizziest heights his heart | |
| For the roll of my rocky waters; | |
| And I lighten and thunder through. | |
| And sometimes I tame my will | |
| To sing like the wren-like rill, | 30 |
| And I mirror the flower and bending bower, | |
| And laugh in the open blue. | |
| |
| But sometimes the cataract-rain | |
| Fills my breast with frantic disdain, | |
| And my boiling deep shoots torrent-like, | 35 |
| Lashing and crashing past;— | |
| Whole forests I tear in my wrath; | |
| Whole hamlets I strew on my path, | |
| Till my wild waves break upon the lake, | |
| And I slumber in peace at last. | 40 |
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