XXI. THE MAN AND THE MOUNTAIN. THE MOUNTAIN. WHо art thou? who art thou? Climbing up to my white brow But half the size of the little pine tree That in the clefts below grows my knee? What dost want? and what wouldst do Between my cope and the frosty blue? Amid my silent pinnacles The hesitating avalanche dwells, And issuing from my garnered snow A hundred foaming torrents flow;— Little creature-bold and vain, Keep to the safety of the plain, Nor tempt the heights, where, all alone, I hurl the tempests from my throne. THE MAN. Proud mountain-since thou'st found a tongue, Back be thy defiance flung! Small as I am, and mighty thou, With all thy centuries on thy brow, I climb thy heights to make thee mine From thy nether forests of waving pine, Where the icicles gleam to the Polar star. What are thy crags and glaciers rude, Unless in their pregnant solitude They teach me things I pine to know? What are thy pinnacles of snow, Thy caverns where the whirlwinds grow, And all thy rivers, so fierce and free, Unless they minister to me? Great and awful as thou art, Thou art but little to my heart; And thy supreme magnificence Is but the creature of my sense. True, I am smaller than the pine That grows beneath those feet of thine; But I'm thy master, thou not mine. I can measure thee, up and down, Base and girth and snowy crown; I can weigh thee to an ounce, And thy value can pronounce! Nor thine alone, oh mountain high! I can map the orbs of the sky, And tell the distances of Heaven;— To me so small-to me is given To weigh the ponderable sun, And track the planets as they run. And shall not I, thou mountain proud, Scale thy small peaks above the cloud Thou wert made for me to climb Me-the humble-yet sublime! I am little-thou art great Yet what art thou, in all thy state, Compared with me? Thou'rt but a grain In the great ocean of my brain! Look up to heaven, thou haughty hill! Roll thy torrents at thy will; Loose from thy grasp the avalanche, XXII. DREAMING! IDLY DREAMING! I. DREAMING! idly dreaming! In the summer bowers, Came a whisper stilly From the rose and lily And the meadow flowers. "Tho' we bloom to woo you," Seemed the voice to sigh, "Leave, oh, leave us growing, Or like wild-winds blowing Touch, and travel by! Beauty shrinks from selfish capture Love is short that lives on rapture, If you gather us-we die!" |