Classic Poem

Thou hast clothed thy steepest hillsides
With the fragrant fir and pine,
With the timid quaking-aspen,
And the pale-blue columbine;
And thy torrents downward rushing
From the melting snow o'erhead,
Bring a tender, plaintive music
To the canyon's deep-worn bed.

Thou art ever changing color
In thy coat of many hues,
From the glowing orange-crimsons
To the darkling greens and blues;
When the sun through rift in cloudland
Floods thee with his golden rays
On thy slopes the purple shadows
Flit across the browns and grays.

When thy darkened form is outlined
In the rosy western sky,
From the far-flung broken ridges
Magic castles rise on high,—
Castles with fantastic towers
Where the elf-king becks and calls,
While the evening's dying splendor
Streams between the blackened walls.

When the lightning's fiery serpent
Cleaves the air with sudden flash,
And the startled hills give answer
To the thunder's jarring crash,
Calm and fair thy sun-kissed summit
Looms above the mist and rain,
And to thee the melting storm-clouds
Seem a white and fleecy plain.

Fold on fold thy wrinkled foothills,
Rising, lifting up to thee,
Seem the heaving, wind-tossed billows
Of a vast, tumultous sea,—
Thou, a stolid, massive island
With the uplands bare and bleak,
With the hollows and abysses,
And thy lofty, granite peak.


Round thee surged the moving waters
When thou first didst lift thy head;
Thou wert then a rocky island
In the ocean's shifting bed;
But before thy slow uprising
Fled the sullen, restless sea,
As the mists of early morning
From the growing sunlight flee.

Thou hast seen the floodgates loosened
In these arid, burning skies;
Thou hast heard the palm-tree rustle
Where the northern fir-tree sighs;
Nature at thy feet hath fashioned
Many forms in living clay;
Some she held in fond affection;
Some she spurned and cast away.

Last of all was Man created,
Slower than the hare and hind,
Weaker than the bear or panther,
But endowed with cunning mind;
Man alone knew good and evil
And could call things by their name;
But, alas! with greater knowledge
Followed greater sin and shame.


Oh, majestic, mighty mountain,
Mocking Time's eternal flow,
When thou lookest on the mortals
As they toil and weep below,
Dost thou think to live forever,
Since of granite frame thou art,
While the life of Man is measured
By the beating of his heart?

As the ancient, moss-grown boulder
Scorns the limpid, rippling stream,
Thou dost view the flight of ages
As an idly changing dream;
But if water ever running
Wears the rock it rushes past,
So shall Time, the all-consuming,
Eat away thine heart at last.

Though all matter be immortal,
It is ever changing shape;
Soil that gives the ruddy apple,
Gives the luscious, purple grape;
Water makes the curling vapor,
Floating ice and drifting snow;
And the rock that forms the mountain
Makes the sandy plain below.

Death is but a changed condition;
Life is but a passing show;
Sea and mountain, earth and heaven,
Come, and pause a while, and go.
Length of life should not be reckoned
By the number of the years;
Less an age of senseless matter
Than an hour of love and tears!