Classic Poem

See once these stately scenes, then roam no more;
No more remains on earth to eager eyes;
The cataract comes down, a broken roar,
The palisades defy approach, and rise
Green moss'd and dripping to the clouded skies.
The cañon thunders with its full of foam,
And calls loud-mouth'd, and all the land defies;
The mounts make fellowship and dwell at home
In snowy brotherhood beneath their purpled dome.

The rainbows swim in circles round, and rise
Against the hanging granite walls till lost
In drifting dreamy clouds and dappled skies,
A grand mosaic intertwined and toss'd
Along the mighty cañon, bound and cross'd
By storms of screaming birds of sea and land;
The salmon rush below, bright red and boss'd
In silver. Tawny, tall, on either hand
You see the savage spearman nude and silent stand.

Here sweep the wide wild waters cold and white
And blue in their far depths; divided now
By sudden swift canoe as still and light
As feathers nodding from the painted brow
That lifts and looks from out the imaged prow.
Ashore you hear the papoose shout at play;
The curl'd smoke comes from underneath the bough
Of leaning fir: the wife looks far away
And sees a swift slim bark divide the dashing spray.

Slow drift adown the river's level'd deep,
And look above; lo, columns! woods! the snow!
The rivers rush upon the brink and leap
From out the clouds three thousand feet below,
And land afoam in tops of firs that grow
Against your river's rim: they plash, they play
In clouds, now loud and now subdued and slow,
A thousand thunder tones; they swing and sway
In idle winds, long leaning shafts of shining spray.

An Indian summer-time it was, long past,
We lay on this Columbia, far below
The stormy water falls, and God had cast
Us heaven's stillness. Dreamily and slow
We drifted as the light bark chose to go.
An Indian girl with ornaments of shell
Began to sing… The stars may hold such flow
Of hair, such eyes, but rarely earth. There fell
A sweet enchantment that possess'd me as a spell.

We saw an elk forsake the sable wood,
Step quick across the rim of shining sand,
Breast out unscared against the flashing flood,
Then brisket deep with lifted antlers stand,
And ears alert, look sharp on either hand,
Then whistle shrill to dam and doubting fawn
To cross, then lead with black nose from the land.
They cross'd, they climb'd the heaving hills, were gone,
A sturdy charging line with crooked sabers drawn.

Then black swans cross'd us slowly low and still;
Then other swans, wide-wing'd and white as snow,
Flew overhead and topp'd the timber'd hill,
And call'd and sang afar, coarsevoiced and slow,
Till sounds roam'd lost in somber firs below
Then clouds blew in, and all the sky was cast
With tumbled and tumultuous clouds that grow
Red thunderbolts. … A flash! A thunderblast!
The clouds were rent, and lo! Mount
Hood hung white and vast.