Classic Poem

On the crag I sat in wonder,
Stars above me, forests under;
Through the valleys came and went
Tempest forces never spent,
And the gorge sent up the thunder
Of the stream within it pent.

Round me with majestic bearing
Stood the giant mountains, wearing
Helmets of eternal snows,
Cleft by nature's labour throes—
Monster faces mutely staring
Upward into God's repose.

At my feet in desolation
Swayed the pines, a shadowy nation,
Round the wood-lake deep and dread,
Round the river glacier-fed,
Where a ghostly undulation
Shakes its subterranean bed.

And I cried, O wildernesses!
Mountains! which the wind caresses,
In a savage love sublime,
Through the bounds of space and time,
All your moods and deep distresses
Roll around me like a chime.

‘Lo, I hear the mighty chorus
Of the elements that bore us
Down the course of nature's stream,
Onward in a haunted dream
Towards the darkness, where before us
Time and death forgotten seem.

‘Now behold the links of lightning
Round the neck of storm-god tightening,
Madden him with rage and shame
Till he smites the earth with flame,
In the darkening and the brightening
Of the clouds on which he came.

‘Nature! at whose will are driven
Tides of ocean, winds of heaven,
Thou who rulest near and far
Forces grappling sun and star,
Is to thee the knowledge given
Whence these came and what they are?

‘Is thy calm the calm of knowing
Whence the force is, whither going?
Is it but the blank despair
Of the wrecked, who does not care,
Out at sea, what wind is blowing
To the death that waits him there?

‘Mother Nature, stern aggressor,
Of thy child the mind-possessor,
Thou art in us like a flood,
Welling through our thought and blood—
Force evolving great from lesser,
As the blossom from the bud.

‘Yea, I love thy fixed, enduring
Times and seasons, life procuring
From abysmal heart of thine;
And my spirit would resign
All its dreams and hopes alluring
With thy spirit to combine.

‘Would that I, amid the splendour
Of the thunder-blasts, could render
Back the dismal dole of birth,
Fusing soul-clouds in the girth
Of thy rock breasts, or the tender
Green of everlasting earth.

‘Haply, when the scud was flying
And the lurid daylight dying
Through the rain-smoke on the sea,
Thoughtless, painless, one with thee,
I, in perfect bondage lying,
Should for ever thus be free.

‘Mighty spirits, who have striven
Up life's ladder-rounds to heaven,
Or ye freighted ones who fell
On the poppy slopes of hell,
When the soul was led or driven,
Knew ye not who wrought the spell?

‘Understood not each his brother
From the features of our mother
Stamped on every human face?
Did not earth, man's dwelling-place,
Draw you to her as no other,
With a stronger bond than grace?

‘Tempest hands the forests rending,
Placid stars the night attending,
Mountains, storm-clouds, land and sea,
Nature!—make me one with thee;
From my soul its pinions rending,
Chain me to thy liberty.

‘Hark! the foot of death is nearing,
And my spirit aches with fearing,
Hear me, mother, hear my cry,
Merge me in the harmony
Of thy voice which stars are hearing,
Wonder-stricken in the sky.

‘Mother, will no sorrow move thee?
Does the silence heartless prove thee?
Thou who from the rocks and rain
Mad'st this soul, take back again
What thy fingers wrought to love thee
Through the furnace of its pain.

‘Giant boulders, roll beside me,
Tangled ferns, bow down and hide me,
Hide me from the face of death;
Or, great Nature, on thy breath
Send some mighty words to guide me,
Till the demon vanisheth.’

Then as sweet as organ playing,
Came a voice, my fears allaying,
From the mountains and the sea,
‘Wouldst thou, soul, be one with me,
In thy might the slayer slaying?
Wrestle not with what must be.’

Heart and spirit in devotion,
Vibrant with divine emotion,
Bowed before that mighty sound,
And amid the dark around
Quaffed the strength of land and ocean
In a sacrament profound.

Then I burst my bonds asunder,
And my voice rose in the thunder
With a full and powerful breath,
Strong for what great nature saith,
And I bade the stars in wonder
See me slay the slayer—death.