AJESTIC pile! The morning's earliest beams,
Illume thy summit. Sunset's latest ray
There softly lingers, but the glorious night
Brings to thy beauteous brow a diadem
More radiant still. Bare of all nature's green,
Thy granite cloud-rests lift no towering pines-
Display no crown of verdure-but to us
Who love the memories which round thee cling
Thou art more fragrant than the dewy pearls
Of perfum'd Lebanon, when south-winds wake
The cedars. Unadorn'd thy crags of gray,
But the Great Artist, from His studio
Among the stars, doth gently o'er thee bend,
With Heaven's soft colors on His easel mix'd
To touch thee into loveliness. Thou art
A rock, more regal than the storied heights
On which grim Stirling's mossy battlements
O'erlook the field of Bannockburn-unmatch'd
By Edinburgh's historic citadel,
Whose ramparts crown the Athens of the North.
Unequal'd by Gibraltar's far-fam'd rock,
Guarding the gates of the Hesperides-
Near which great Nelson's victory enrich'd
The proud name of Trafalgar-uneclips'd
In grandeur by the old Acropolis,
Whereon Minerva's matchless temple stood
The glory of the Greeks-in loneliness
Of beauty, unexcell'd by the abode
Of the immortal gods, from which stern Jove
Hurl'd his Olympian thunders-unsurpass'd,
In weird sublimity, by Carmel's peak,
On which the ancient Tishbite's out-stretch'd arms
Drew down the fire of Heaven, to consume
The waiting bullocks-then, with sword a-flame,
Slaughter'd the priests of Baal-unapproach'd,
In stately strength, by Zion's holy hill,
On which once rose the courts of Solomon,
Whose splendor, to the lips of Sheba's queen,
Brought wondering rhapsodies, and in whose airs
The gentle Psalmist tun'd his harp of gold
And wak'd the tenderest music of the world.
Unmatch'd by Ebal or by Gerizim,
Or by Mount Hermon's hooded heights of snow-
There's not a mist-wreath'd peak of Palestine,
Aye, from Beersheba even unto Dan,
To match thee in the power of beauty's mold!
Not e'en the mountain of Beatitudes,
Which, sloping seaward, looks on Galilee,
Which heard the weary Master's midnight prayer,
And from the honey'd lips of love divine,
Caught the sweet accents of the Golden Rule.
Wrought of creation's elemental stone,
A solid boulder-of Confederate tint
Thou art, indeed, the Southland's sacred mount,
Meet to enshrine her holy principles;
And to thy keeping, till the last Great Day,
Dixie commits her memories of the gray.
Grim fragment of creation's adamant!
Time's sleepless warden! Thou canst never be
Food for the conquering worm. Thou canst laugh
At the insidious mole. No toll of thee
Can the exciseman of the centuries take,
Immune to all tax levies. Thou shalt see
The last of Adam's line, behold unmov'd
Humanity's extinction, watch the end
Approach to all things finite. Death itself
Can plant no seed of Old Mortality
In thy unfurrow'd rock, can deftly weave
No deep and subtle net-work of decay
Around thy bastions, cannot bow nor bend
Thy regal cap-stone, nor in tottering ruins
Behold thy ramparts to the dust cast down,
Till comes that hour to which all hours point,
Till universal darkness wraps the stars
In nature's last eclipse, till suns are quench'd
And all the flowers are dead, till all the forms
Of life are gone-vanish'd from all the hills
The foot-prints made by cattle and by man-
Till earth and sky are one vast sepulchre
And, on creation's drama ended, falls,
To rise no more, the curtain of the night.
Unique thou art, a miracle of mounts!
But, ah, thy slopes how variant!-one climbs
By slow gradation, step by step, to Heaven,
Embower'd with shade-for more than half the way,
Claspt by green ferns-the other madly leaps,
In one swift bound to Hell;-an awful cliff,
O'er which, in moments venturesome, alas,
Full many a buoyant youth, on pleasure bent,
Has fallen to his fate. On thy steep side,
One seems to see a frozen cataract,
A vast Niagara, an ocean swell,
By some magician's wonder-working wand,
Turn'd into stone. No human architect
Devis'd thy marvelous plan, or lifted thee
In isolation to the firmament,
As old Chaldeans did that cloud-capp'd tower
That rose, in ancient time, on Shinar's plain.
Thou standest here, in solemn solitude,
A witness of the ages, to behold,
Time's ebb and flow, to measure and to mock,
The petty somersaults of pigmy men,
Whose proudest glories out of cobwebs spun,
Endure but for a day, then grimly pass
Into the dust of dreams-forgotten all!
Yet thou dost lift our errant thoughts aloft,
To muse on higher things, to scale the stars,
And, insects though we be, 'tis ours to claim,
In yonder bourn, an immortality
Which thou canst never know; for God's own breath,
Has kindled in our souls a living spark
To light death's dungeon, aye, has wak'd a seed
To flower in morning fields beyond the tomb,
When mountains mingle in the dust with vales
And height and depth on one wide level meet!
God's altar art thou, by His mandate rear'd.
Such massive masonry as thine, deep-bas'd,
Enduring as the arch which o'er thee bends,
Is not the handiwork of mortal man.
On every atom of thy dust is stampt
Divinity; o'er all thy grandeur broods
The infinite. Jehovah's signet seal
Is on thy pattern. It was His design.
Within His sky-pavilion on thy heights,
Omnipotence is seated,-God's enthron'd.
There, too, he speaks in majesty to man,
Not in the worded syllables of sound
But in the still small voice of silence-aye,
As truly speaks as when in days of yore,
From Sinai's brow, to signal unborn time.
'Mid flame and smoke and earthquake rumblings dire
There volley'd forth a trumpet's deafening peal,
Which, to its roots, the Rock of Horeb shook
And all the answering echoes thunder'd-God!
MISCELLANEOUS
PROSE and VERSE
|