Strophes LXXXI à C

No further evidence of life, save where
The young whales bask their broad backs in the sun,
Or the gay grampus, sportive as a hare,
Leaps and rejoices, playfully as one
In youth who sees some holiday begun.
Perhaps a crowded steamer, passing by,
    Lights up the scene a moment. Trebly dun
    The shades of sullen loneliness that lie
On rugged L’Ance l’eau when no living thing is nigh.

    Over the darkening waters! on through scenes
    Whose unimaginable wildness fills
    The mind with joy insatiate, and weans
    The soul from earth, to Him whose Presence thrills
    All Beauty as all Truth. These iron Hills!
    In what profusion did He pile them here,
    Thick as the flowers that blossom where the rills
    Chant to the primal woods. Year after year
In solitude eternal, rapt in contemplation drear,

Dreaming of the old years before they rose
Triumphant from the deep, whose waters roll’d
Above their solemn and unknown repose;
Dreaming of that bright morning, when, of old,
Beyond the Red Man’s memory, they told
The Secrets of the Ages to the sun,
That smiled upon them from his throne of gold;
Dreaming of the bright stars and loving moon,
That first shone on them from the Night’s impressive noon:

Dreaming of the long ages that have passed
Since then, and with them that diminished race
Whose birchen fleets these inky waters glassed,
As they swept o’er them with the wind’s swift pace.
Of their wild legends scarce remains a trace;
Thou hold’st the myriad secrets in thy brain,
Oh! stately bluffs! As well seek to efface
The light of the bless’d stars, as to obtain
From thy sealed, granite lips, tradition or refrain!

But they are there, though man may never know
Their number or their beauty. Pass the eye
Along the ever-looming scene, where’er we go,
Through these long corridors of rock and sky—
What startling barriers, rising sullenly
From the dark deeps, like giants, seem to place
An adamantine gateway, close and high,
To bar our progress; meet them face to face,
The magic doors fly open, and the rocks recede apace.

Hills piled on rugged hills! But see, how drear,
And with what startling solitariness,
The Tete de Boule looms yonder! Cold and clear
In isolated grandeur, the huge mass,
Like the stern Magi of this granite pass,
He stands amid-stream, thoughtfully apart
From his far-off companions. Once, alas!
1 knew a stately soul, with lone, sad heart,
And thus to me he sung—that mountain’s counterpart:

I’ve supped with depression and feasted with sorrow,
    The hot tears of anguish have withered my heart;
And now, death might strike down my last hope to-morrow,
    Not one tear is left me to deaden his dart.

From youth up to manhood a scourge was upon me,
    Few roses of pleasure have bloomed in life’s crown;
No rainbow of promise wherein I might sun me,
    The grasp of a fate is still bearing me down.

And thus like a tree in the lone desert—blasted,
    Dry, leafless and withered—dead, sapless and bare,
I long for love’s sweet dews, once mine, now untasted,
    And stand like a wretch stricken dumb with despair!

Not often these imperishable hills
Are startled by the cheering Voice of Song.
Swift flies our fleet bark onward, ev’n as rills
Leap, crystal-footed, like starbeams, along
Steep mountain sides, that, resolute and strong,
Heed not their graceful steps. There is no sign
Of human habitation seen among
These heaven-reaching bluffs; no beach supine,
Or banks inviting, where the weary might recline.

One solitary sea gull hovering,
Like an adventurous spirit, o’er the deep,
And he, too, glides as silent on the wing
As a child’s thoughts of heaven, Parched and steep,
The red-browed mountains slumber, like the sleep
Of a drugged giant—dreamless, deep and wild.
A few dwarfed pines and impish cedars creep
Along the embrowned summits, halfbeguiled
By the warm sunbeams, where no foliage ever smiled.

But as our restless shallop from her prow
Scatters the liquid pearls in her mad haste,
These naked boulders lag behind, and now
The smiling hills with verdant life are graced.
Like a lone star twinkling above the waste
Of ocean, when the youthful mariner sees
That the portentous storm has safely pass’d,
Is yonder distant dwelling, where the breeze
Frills the calm bay, and flirts with the coquetting trees:

Slumbering at the base of two high rocks,
It looks like Patience at the feet of Death.
Or, fancy it some grave magician’s box,
Which, opened, wafts a pestilential breath
Along the mountains, an invisible wreath
Of subtlest essence, permeating through
Their granite pores, sapping all life beneath,
And robbing their bald summits of the blue
And rich erial tints, where the tall cedars grew.

A green delightful valley, sweetly smiles
Close to those rocks, as if an Angel-path
Led to the shore from the remotest hills,
That lave their heads in an ambrosial bath
Of vapors and warm sunlight, such as hath
Been carried down from heaven in the urns
Of ministering spirits. Free from scathe
Is this sweet vale, where some fair sprite sojourns,
In smiling contrast to the blasted mountain ferns.

Here, the dark pines clothe the steep mountain-side,
There, heavy beetling cliffs, rugged and bald,
Lift their gray heads above the sunny tide—
Like the stern phantom of some Prophet-Scald
Of the old time, by magic wiles enthralled:
Full of his Scandinavian fire, and yet
Spell-bound and silent, like a ghost appalled.
A river, winding, like a rivulet,
Through the thick woods and reverential hills, has set

Its seal of freshness on the changeful wild.
A stately ship lies anchored in the bay;
Like an Oasis to the Desert-child,
It speaks of Life. No rocks can bar the way
Where Love and Hope lend wings to human clay:
The granite knots roll from us, like a cloud
Of vapor up the sunny-minded Day,
    When Morn looks down from heaven: They have bowed
Their stubborn heads, and parted, like a daunted crowd

    Of evil spirits who have seen the sun.
    These hills lie mingled in a soft embrace,
    As if they felt the joy that makes us one
    When human hearts unite, and face to face
    Love looks on Love, discovering that trace
    Of Eden that yet lingers in the heart:
    Are they the offspring, love, of some old race
    Of mountains, that no Geologic art
Can trace—no whisper of their deep old loves impart?

Oh! give me the love of your woman’s heart,
    And the light of your cheerful eye!
    And the earth will change
    From a phantom strange
    To a heaven with stars and sky;
    And the Sun of Hope
    Up the gleaming cope,
    Like the Genius of Love, will roll,
    And dark Night no more
    Will obscure the shore
    Where beckons Love’s mystic Soul!
For your love is as deep as the comet’s sweep,
    When it reels from its astral lair,
    And your looks as bright
    As the lustrous light
The sun shakes from his golden hair.
    As pure as the hue
    Of the summer blue,
That is warmed by the sunset’s glow,
    Are the thoughts that rise
    In your cheerful eyes
To banish the Demon, Woe.

I’d pillow my head on your snowy breast,
And my heart, like a cymbal fine,
    Would throb with a tone
    That were Music’s own,
When it wakened a chord of thine:
    Then the Sun of Hope
    Up Life’s gleaming cope,
The true Genius of Love would roll,
    And dark Night no more
    Would obscure the shore
Where beckons Love’s mystic Soul.

Nature has here put on her royalest dress,
And Cape Eternity looms grandly up,
Like a God reigning in the Wilderness
Holding communion with the distant cope,
Interpreting the stars’ dreams, as they ope
Their silver gates, where stand his regal kin,
Oh! for some special gift! to give full scope
To the soul’s promptings, so that I might win
To earth some portion of the fire that burns within.

A deep and overpowering solitude
Reigns undisturbed along the varied scene.
A wilderness of Beauty, stern and rude,
In undulating swells of wavy green;
Soft, airy slopes, bold, massive and serene;
Rich in wild beauty and sublimity,
From the far summits in their piney sheen,
Down to the shadows thrown by rock and tree
Along the dark, deep wave, that slumbers placidly.

He, love, who flushed the daisy built the world.
All things come perfect from His Master-hand.
The stars, His Thoughts, through wide creation whirled,
Down to the minutest monad of sand
Upon the shore, in equal glory stand
Before His sight. But Man, and man alone,
He holds supremest of the works He planned:
And yet, how like Earth’s faintest monotone,
Compared to Heaven’s choir, he seems, when thrown

In puny contrast to a work like this.
Slope after slope, wave after wave of light
And graceful foliage, which the sun’s warm kiss
Thrills, from the centre to the farthest height.
The mind soars God-ward with a keen delight,
And proudly beats the undisciplined heart,
Rendering homage to the Infinite,
As from the Cape’s embrace the wild shapes start,
Filling the soul with dreams that nevermore depart.

A playful waterfall comes dashing down,
As silvery as the laughter of a child
Dancing upon the greensward, and the sun
Scatters his golden arrows through the wild,
Cleaving the molten-silver stream that smiled
So lovingly upon his earliest beams,
So unsuspecting Innocence, beguiled
By Pleasures, soft as sunlight upon streams,
Flies the swift darts that pierce the enamel of its dreams.

Is there a soul so dead to nature’s charms,
That thrills not here in this divine retreat?
Love lures me evermore to Woman’s arms,
But here I kneel at Nature’s hallowed feet!
Love fills my being with a calm, replete,
But regal Nature sets my spirit free
With grateful praises to God’s Mercy seat.
Yet nature binds me closer, love, to thee:
Ev’n as this dreamy Bay,* in sweet felicity;