these, these have left Their spell upon me, and their memories Have passed into my spirit, and are now Blent with my being till they seem a part Of my own immortality.
At the creation, hollowed out this vast
Domain of darkness, where no herb nor flower Ere sprang amid the sands, nor dews, nor rains, Nor blessed sunbeams fell with freshening power, Nor gentle breeze its Eden message told Amid the dreadful gloom. Six thousand years Swept o'er the earth ere human footprints marked This subterranean desert. Centuries Like shadows came and past, and not a sound Was in this realm, save when at intervals, In the long lapse of ages, some huge mass Of overhanging rock fell thundering down, Its echoes sounding through these corridors A moment, and then dying in a hush
Of silence, such as brooded o'er the earth When earth was chaos. The great mastodon, The dreaded monster of the elder world, Passed o'er this mighty cavern, and his tread Bent the old forest oaks like fragile reeds And made earth tremble; armies in their pride Perchance have met above it in the shock Of war, with shout and groan, and clarion blast, And the hoarse echoes of the thunder gun; The storm, the whirlwind, and the hurricane Have roared above it, and the bursting cloud
Sent down its red and crashing thunderbolt; Earthquakes have trampled o'er it in their wrath, Rocking earth's surface as the storm-wind rocks The old Atlantic; yet no sound of these Ere came down to the everlasting depths Of these dark solitudes.
With awe or admiration on the new
And unfamiliar, but pass coldly by
The lovelier and the mightier! Wonderful Is this lone world of darkness and of gloom, But far more wonderful yon outer world Lit by the glorious sun. These arches swell Sublime in lone and dim magnificence, But how sublimer God's blue canopy, Beleaguered with his burning cherubim Keeping their watch eternal! Beautiful Are all the thousand snow-white gems that lie In these mysterious chambers, gleaming out Amid the melancholy gloom, and wild These rocky hills and cliffs and gulfs, but far More beautiful and wild the things that greet The wanderer in our world of light: the stars Floating on high like islands of the blest; The autumn sunsets glowing like the gate Of far-off Paradise; the gorgeous clouds On which the glories of the earth and sky Meet and commingle; earth's unnumbered flowers All turning up their gentle eyes to heaven; The birds, with bright wings glancing in the sun, Filling the air with rainbow miniatures;
The green old forests surging in the gale; The everlasting mountains, on whose peaks The setting sun burns like an altar-flame; And ocean, like a pure heart rendering back Heaven's perfect image, or in his wild wrath Heaving and tossing like the stormy breast Of a chained giant in his agony.
THE RIVER IN THE MAMMOTH CAVE.
DARK mysterious stream, I sit by thee In awe profound, as myriad wanderers Have sat before. I see thy waters move From out the ghostly glimmerings of my lamp Into the dark beyond, as noiselessly
As if thou wert a sombre river drawn Upon a spectral canvas, or the stream Of dim Oblivion flowing through the lone And shadowy vale of death. There is no wave To whisper on thy shore, or breathe a wail, Wounding its tender bosom on thy sharp And jagged rocks. Innumerous mingled tones, The voices of the day and of the night, Are ever heard through all our outer world, For Nature there is never dumb; but here I turn and turn my listening ear, and catch No mortal sound, save that of my own heart, That mid the awful stillness throbs aloud, Like the far sea-surf's low and measured beat
Upon its rocky shore. But when a cry
Or shout or song is raised, how wildly back Come the weird echoes from a thousand rocks, As if unnumbered airy sentinels,
The genii of the spot, caught up the voice, Repeating it in wonder, — a wild maze Of spirit-tones, a wilderness of sounds, Earth-born but all unearthly.
O wizard stream, a river of the dead, A river of some blasted, perished world, Wandering forever in the mystic void. No breeze e'er strays across thy solemn tide; No bird e'er breaks thy surface with his wing; No star or sky or bow is ever glassed
Within thy depths; no flower or blade e'er breathes Its fragrance from thy bleak banks on the air. True, here are flowers, or semblances of flowers, Carved by the magic fingers of the drops That fall upon thy rocky battlements, - Fair roses, tulips, pinks, and violets, - All white as cerements of the coffined dead; But they are flowers of stone, and never drank The sunshine or the dew. O sombre stream, Whence comest thou, and whither goest? Far Above, upon the surface of old Earth,
A hundred rivers o'er thee pass and sweep, In music and in sunshine, to the sea; Thou art not born of them. Whence comest thou, And whither goest? None of earth can know. No mortal e'er has gazed upon thy source,
No mortal seen where thy dark waters blend With the abyss of Ocean. None may guess The mysteries of thy course. Perchance thou hast
A hundred mighty cataracts, thundering down Toward Earth's eternal centre; but their sound Is not for ear of man. All we can know Is that thy tide rolls out, a spectre stream, From yon stupendous, frowning wall of rock, And, moving on a little way, sinks down Beneath another mass of rock as dark And frowning, even as life, -our little life, Born of one fathomless eternity,
Steals on a moment and then disappears
In an eternity as fathomless.
Marais du Cygne, Kansas.
LE MARAIS DU CYGNE.
THE massacre of unarmed and unoffending men in Southern Kansas took place near the Marais du Cygne of the French voyageurs.
A BLUSH as of roses
Where rose never grew!
Great drops on the bunch-grass, But not of the dew!
A taint in the sweet air
For wild bees to shun! A stain that shall never Bleach out in the sun!
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