Part 30 (2/2)
How shall I praise thee, Mohawk? How portray The love, the joyousness, felt in thy presence?
When each new step along the silvery tide Added new gems of beauty to our thought, And lapped the soul in an Elysium Of verdure and of grace, fed by thy sweetness.
O, how gay Fancy smiled, and deemed it home!
This is, thought she, the river of my garden; These are the graceful trees that form its bowers, And these the meads where I have sighed to roam.
I now may fold my wearied wings in peace.
JOURNEY TO TRENTON FALLS.
I.
TO MY FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS.
If this faint reflex from those days so bright May aught of sympathy among you gain, I shall not think these verses penned in vain; Though they tell nothing of the fancies light, The kindly deeds, rich thoughts, and various grace With which you knew to make the hours so fair, That neither grief nor sickness could efface From memory's tablet what you printed there.
Could I have breathed your spirit through these lines, They might have charms to win a critic's smile, Or the cold worldling of a sigh beguile.
I could but from my being bring one tone; May it arouse the sweetness of your own.
II.
THE HIGHLANDS.
I saw ye first, arrayed in mist and cloud; No cheerful lights softened your aspect bold; A sullen gray, or green, more grave and cold, The varied beauties of the scene enshroud.
Yet not the less, O Hudson! calm and proud, Did I receive the impress of that hour Which showed thee to me, emblem of that power Of high resolve, to which even rocks have bowed; Thou wouldst not deign thy course to turn aside, And seek some smiling valley's welcome warm, But through the mountain's very heart, thy pride Has been, thy channel and thy banks to form.
Not even the ”bulwarks of the world” could bar The inland fount from joining ocean's war!
III.
CATSKILL.
How fair at distance shone yon silvery blue, O stately mountain-tops, charming the mind To dream of pleasures which she there may find, Where from the eagle's height she earth can view!
Nor are those disappointments which ensue; For though, while eyeing what beneath us lay, Almost we shunned to think of yesterday, As wonderingly our looks its course pursue.
Dwarfed to a point the joys of many hours, The river on whose bosom we were borne Seems but a thread, of pride and beauty shorn; Its banks, its shadowy groves, like beds of flowers, Wave their diminished heads;--yet would we sigh, Since all this loss shows us more near the sky?
IV.
VALLEY OF THE MOHAWK.
Could I my words with gentlest grace imbue, Which the flute's breath, or harp's clear tones, can bless, I then might hope the feelings to express, And with new life the happy day endue, Thou gav'st, O vale, than Tempe's self more fair!
With thy romantic stream and emerald isles, Touched by an April mood of tears and smiles Which stole on matron August unaware; The meads with all the spring's first freshness green, The trees with summer's thickest garlands crowned, And each so elegant, that fairy queen All day might wander ere she chose her round; No blemish on the sense of beauty broke, But the whole scene one ecstasy awoke.
V.
TRENTON FALLS, EARLY IN THE MORNING.
The sun, impatient, o'er the lofty trees Struggles to illume as fair a sight as lies Beneath the light of his joy-loving eyes, Which all the forms of energy must please; A solemn shadow falls in pillared form, Made by yon ledge, which noontide scarcely shows, Upon the amber radiance, soft and warm, Where through the cleft the eager torrent flows.
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