Classic Poem

Yon blue plateau to all seems low,
Whose minds some mountain fills,
Except us there in Delaware,
Who ne'er saw higher hills;
At Newark's old academy,
It almost shook our will,
To walk so far and scale that bar
The dome of Iron Hill.

On holidays we saw the haze
Around its woodlands lie;
To climb those goals, our level souls
Seemed tempting destiny;
The lesser boys they cease their noise
And hold their laughter still,
To come more near those heights of fear
On shaggy Iron hill.

Beneath its head the iron, red,
Of ancient ore banks stood,
Where goblin Swedes their evil deeds
Revealed in stains of blood;
Their metal arts our country hearts
Uncanny thought and ill,—
From murdered man the oxides ran
That tinctured Iron hill!

The tombs we search at old Welsh church
That guards the cairn's ascent;
In Cymric writ, those stones of grit
Increase our fear's ferment:
Beneath, the dead, above blood-red!—
The lonely wood paths thrill
Our ghost awed wits; the old ore pits
Seem graves on Iron Hill!

We think we see from some tall tree,
The blue-veined landscapes, where
One far-off streak is Chesapeake,
Another Delaware;
Their long white length this knoll has strength
To sunder by its will;
It disarrays those mighty bays
The wand of Iron hill.

In those small years, upon such fears
My fancy learned to thrill.
An elevation on me lay,—
The swell of Iron Hill.
The misty moods of altitudes,
Romance's glow and chill;
And not more high Mount Sinai
To me, than Iron Hill.