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| ’T WAS sunset’s hallow’d time—and such an eve | |
| Might almost tempt an angel heaven to leave. | |
| Never did brighter glories greet the eye, | |
| Low in the warm and ruddy western sky: | |
| Nor the light clouds at summer eve unfold | 5 |
| More varied tints of purple, red, and gold. | |
| Some in the pure, translucent, liquid breast | |
| Of crystal lake, fast anchor’d seem’d to rest, | |
| Like golden islets scatter’d far and wide, | |
| By elfin skill in fancy’s fabled tide, | 10 |
| Where, as wild eastern legends idly feign, | |
| Fairy, or genii, hold despotic reign. | |
| Others, like vessels gilt with burnish’d gold, | |
| Their flitting airy way are seen to hold, | |
| All gallantly equipp’d with streamers gay, | 15 |
| While hands unseen, or chance directs their way; | |
| Around, athwart, the pure ethereal tide, | |
| With swelling purple sail, they rapid glide, | |
| Gay as the bark, where Egypt’s wanton queen | |
| Reclining on the shaded deck was seen, | 20 |
| At which as gazed the uxorious Roman fool, | |
| The subject world slipt from his dotard rule. | |
| Anon, the gorgeous scene begins to fade, | |
| And deeper hues the ruddy skies invade; | |
| The haze of gathering twilight nature shrouds, | 25 |
| And pale, and paler, wax the changeful clouds. | |
| Then sunk the breeze into a breathless calm, | |
| The silent dews of evening dropt like balm; | |
| The hungry nighthawk from his lone haunt hies, | |
| To chase the viewless insect through the skies; | 30 |
| The bat began his lantern-loving flight, | |
| The lonely whip-poor-will, our bird of night, | |
| Ever unseen, yet ever seeming near, | |
| His shrill note quaver’d in the startled ear; | |
| The buzzing beetle forth did gaily hie, | 35 |
| With idle hum, and careless blundering eye; | |
| The little trusty watchman of pale night, | |
| The fire-fly trimm’d anew his lamp so bright, | |
| And took his merry airy circuit round | |
| The sparkling meadow’s green and fragrant bound, | 40 |
| Where blossom’d clover, bathed in balmy dew, | |
| In fair luxuriance, sweetly blushing grew. * * * * * * * | |
| Now all through Pennsylvania’s pleasant land, | |
| Unheeded pass’d our little roving band, | |
| —For every soul had something here to do, | 45 |
| Nor turn’d aside our cavalcade to view— | |
| By Bethlehem, where Moravian exiles ’bide, | |
| In rural paradise, on Lehigh’s side, | |
| And York and Lancaster—whose rival rose | |
| In this good land, no bloody discord knows. | 50 |
| Not such their fate!—the ever grateful soil | |
| Rewards the blue-eyed German’s patient toil; | |
| Richer and rounder every year he grows, | |
| Nor other ills his stagnant bosom knows | |
| Than caitiff grub, or cursed Hessian fly, | 55 |
| Mildews, and smuts, a dry or humid sky; | |
| Before he sells, the market’s sudden fall, | |
| Or sudden rise, when sold—still worse than all! | |
| Calmly he lives—the tempest of the mind, | |
| That marks its course by many a wreck behind; | 60 |
| The purpose high that great ambition feels, | |
| Sometimes perchance upon his vision steals, | |
| But never in his sober waking thought | |
| One stirring, active impulse ever wrought. | |
| Calmly he lives—as free from good as blame, | 65 |
| His home, his dress, his equipage the same, | |
| And when he dies, in sooth, ’t is soon forgot | |
| What once he was, or what he once was not— | |
| An honest man, perhaps,—’t is somewhat odd, | |
| That such should be the noblest work of God! | 70 |
| So have I seen in garden rich and gay, | |
| A stately cabbage waxing fat each day; | |
| Unlike the lively foliage of the trees, | |
| Its stubborn leaves ne’er wave in summer breeze, | |
| Nor flower, like those that prank the walks around, | 75 |
| Upon its clumsy stem is ever found; | |
| It heeds not noontide heats, or evening’s balm, | |
| And stands unmoved in one eternal calm. | |
| At last, when all the garden’s pride is lost, | |
| It ripens in drear autumn’s killing frost, | 80 |
| And in a savory sourkrout finds its end, | |
| From which detested dish, me heaven defend! * * * * * * | |
| Our Basil beat the lazy sun next day, | |
| And bright and early had been on his way, | |
| But that the world he saw e’en yesternight, | 85 |
| Seem’d faded like a vision from his sight. | |
| One endless chaos spread before his eyes, | |
| No vestige left of earth or azure skies, | |
| A boundless nothingness reign’d everywhere, | |
| Hid the green fields, and silent all the air. | 90 |
| As look’d the traveller for the world below, | |
| The lively morning breeze began to blow, | |
| The magic curtain roll’d in mists away, | |
| And a gay landscape laugh’d upon the day. | |
| As light the fleeting vapors upward glide, | 95 |
| Like sheeted spectres on the mountain side, | |
| New objects open to his wondering view | |
| Of various form, and combinations new. | |
| A rocky precipice, a waving wood, | |
| Deep winding dell, and foaming mountain flood, | 100 |
| Each after each, with coy and sweet delay, | |
| Broke on his sight, as at young dawn of day, | |
| Bounded afar by peak aspiring bold, | |
| Like giant capt with helm of burnish’d gold. | |
| So when the wandering grandsire of our race | 105 |
| On Ararat had found a resting place, | |
| At first a shoreless ocean met his eye, | |
| Mingling on every side with one blue sky; | |
| But as the waters, every passing day, | |
| Sunk in the earth, or roll’d in mists away, | 110 |
| Gradual, the lofty hills, like islands, peep | |
| From the rough bosom of the boundless deep, | |
| Then the round hillocks, and the meadows green, | |
| Each after each, in freshen’d bloom are seen, | |
| Till, at the last, a fair and finish’d whole | 115 |
| Combined to win the gazing patriarch’s soul. | |
| Yet oft he look’d, I ween, with anxious eye, | |
| In lingering hope somewhere, perchance, to spy, | |
| Within the silent world, some living thing, | |
| Crawling on earth, or moving on the wing, | 120 |
| Or man, or beast—alas! was neither there, | |
| Nothing that breathed of life in earth or air; | |
| ’T was a vast silent mansion rich and gay, | |
| Whose occupant was drown’d the other day; | |
| A church-yard, where the gayest flowers oft bloom | 125 |
| Amid the melancholy of the tomb; | |
| A charnel house, where all the human race | |
| Had piled their bones in one wide resting place; | |
| Sadly he turn’d from such a sight of wo, | |
| And sadly sought the lifeless world below. | 130 |
| Now down the mountain’s rugged western side, | |
| Descending slow, our lonely travellers hied, | |
| Deep in a narrow glen, within whose breast | |
| The rolling fragments of the mountain rest; | |
| Rocks tumbled on each other, by rude chance, | 135 |
| Crown’d with grey fern, and mosses, met the glance, | |
| Through which a brawling river braved its way, | |
| Dashing among the rocks in foamy spray. | |
| Here, ’mid the fragments of a broken world, | |
| In wild and rough confusion, idly hurl’d, | 140 |
| Where ne’er was heard the woodman’s echoing stroke, | |
| Rose a huge forest of gigantic oak; | |
| With heads that tower’d half up the mountain’s side. | |
| And arms extending round them far and wide, | |
| They look’d coeval with old mother earth, | 145 |
| And seem’d to claim with her an equal birth. | |
| There, by a lofty rock’s moss-mantled base, | |
| Our tired adventurers found a resting place; | |
| Beneath its dark, o’erhanging, sullen brow, | |
| The little bevy nestled snug below, | 150 |
| And with right sturdy appetite, and strong, | |
| Devour’d the rustic meal they brought along. | |
| The squirrel eyed them from his lofty tree, | |
| And chirp’d as wont, with merry morning glee; | |
| The woodcock crow’d as if alone he were, | 155 |
| Or heeded not the strange intruders there, | |
| Sure sign they little knew of man’s proud race | |
| In that sequester’d mountain ’biding place; | |
| For wheresoe’er his wandering footsteps tend, | |
| Man never makes the rural train his friend; | 160 |
| Acquaintance that brings other beings near, | |
| Produces nothing but distrust or fear: | |
| Beasts flee from man the more his heart they know, | |
| And fears, at last, to fix’d aversion grow, | |
| As thus in blithe serenity they sat, | 165 |
| Beguiling resting time with lively chat, | |
| A distant, half heard murmur caught the ear, | |
| Each moment waxing louder, and more near, | |
| A dark obscurity spread all around, | |
| And more than twilight seem’d to veil the ground, | 170 |
| While not a leaf e’en of the aspin stirr’d, | |
| And not a sound but that low moan was heard. | |
| There is a moment when the boldest heart | |
| That would not stoop an inch to ’scape death’s dart, | |
| That never shrunk from certain danger here, | 175 |
| Will quail and shiver with an anguish fear; | |
| ’T is when some unknown mischief hovers nigh, | |
| And heaven itself seems threatening from on high. | |
| Brave was our Basil, as became a man, | |
| Yet still his blood a little cooler ran, | 180 |
| ’Twixt fear and wonder, at that murmur drear, | |
| That every moment wax’d more loud and near. | |
| The riddle soon was read—at last it came, | |
| And nature trembled to her inmost frame; | |
| The forest roar’d, the everlasting oak, | 185 |
| In writhing agonies the storm bespoke, | |
| The live leaves scatter’d wildly everywhere, | |
| Whirl’d round in maddening circles in the air, | |
| The stoutest limbs were scatter’d all around, | |
| The stoutest trees a stouter master found, | 190 |
| Crackling, and crashing, down they thundering go, | |
| And seem to crush the shrinking rocks below: | |
| Then the thick rain in gathering torrents pour’d, | |
| Higher the river rose, and louder roar’d, | |
| And on its dark, quick eddying surface bore | 195 |
| The gather’d spoils of earth along its shore, | |
| While trees that not an hour before had stood | |
| The lofty monarchs of the stately wood, | |
| Now whirling round and round with furious force, | |
| Dash ’gainst the rocks that breast the torrent’s force, | 200 |
| And shiver like a reed by urchin broke, | |
| Through idle mischief, or with heedless stroke; | |
| A hundred cataracts, unknown before, | |
| Rush down the mountain’s side with fearful roar, | |
| And as with foaming fury down they go, | 205 |
| Loose the firm rocks and thunder them below; | |
| Blue lightnings from the dark cloud’s bosom sprung, | |
| Like serpents, menacing with forked tongue, | |
| While many a sturdy oak that stiffly braved | |
| The threatening hurricane that round it raved, | 210 |
| Shiver’d beneath its bright resistless flash, | |
| Came tumbling down amain with fearful crash. | |
| Air, earth, and skies, seem’d now to try their power, | |
| And struggle for the mastery of the hour; | |
| Higher the waters rose, and blacker still, | 215 |
| And threaten’d soon the narrow vale to fill. | |
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