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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