Rocky Mountains, The.

ON RECROSSING THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS IN WINTER, AFTER MANY YEARS.

LONG years ago I wandered here,

In the midsummer of the year, ·
Life's summer too;

A score of horsemen here we rode,
The mountain world its glories showed,
All fair to view.

These scenes in glowing colors drest,
Mirrored the life within my breast,
Its world of hopes;

The whispering woods and fragrant breeze
That stirred the grass in verdant seas
On billowy slopes,

And glistening crag in sunlit sky,
Mid snowy clouds piled mountains high,
Were joys to me;

My path was o'er the prairie wide,
Or here on grander mountain-side,
To choose, all free.

The rose that waved in morning air,
And spread its dewy fragrance there
In careless bloom,

Gave to my heart its ruddiest hue,
O'er my glad life its color threw
And sweet perfume.

Now changed the scene and changed the eyes,
That here once looked on glowing skies,
Where summer smiled;

These riven trees, this wind-swept plain,
Now show the winter's dread domain,
Its fury wild.

The rocks rise black from storm-packed snow,
All checked the river's pleasant flow,
Vanished the bloom;

These dreary wastes of frozen plain
Reflect my bosom's life again,
Now lonesome gloom.

The buoyant hopes and busy life
Have ended all in hateful strife,
And thwarted aim.

The world's rude contact killed the rose,
No more its radiant color shows
False roads to fame.

Backward, amidst the twilight glow
Some lingering spots yet brightly show
On hard roads won,

Where still some grand peaks mark the way
Touched by the light of parting day

And memory's sun.

But here thick clouds the mountains hide,
The dim horizon bleak and wide

No pathway shows,

And rising gusts, and darkening sky,

Tell of the night that cometh, nigh,

The brief day's close.

Anonymous.

LINES WRITTEN ON THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.

HE deep, transparent sky is full
Of many thousand glittering lights,-
Unnumbered stars that calmly rule
The dark dominions of the night.
The mild, bright moon has upward risen,
Out of the gray and boundless plain,
And all around the white snows glisten,
Where frost and ice and silence reign,-
While ages roll away, and they unchanged remain.

These mountains, piercing the blue sky
With their eternal cones of ice;
The torrents dashing from on high,
O'er rock and crag and precipice;
Change not, but still remain as ever,
Unwasting, deathless, and sublime,
And will remain while lightnings quiver,
Or stars the hoary summits climb,
Or rolls the thunder-chariot of eternal Time.

It is not so with all, I change,
And waste as with a living death,
Like one that hath become a strange,
Unwelcome guest, and lingereth
Among the memories of the past,

Where he is a forgotten name;
For Time hath greater power to blast

The hopes, the feelings, and the fame,

To make the passions fierce, or their first strength to

tame.

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