The Appalachian eagle built his nest
High in the sun-lit ethers, taught his young
To soar, on dauntless wing, o'er the abyss
And, from the stars, look down upon the storms. Where yonder mist-wreath'd mountain tops of blue Pillar the firmament's majestic dome,
The beckoning cloud-rests seem to say, "Come back!" The Chattahoochee, in her cradle home
Of clearest crystal, gives thee many a tear,
The organ thunders of Tallulah's gorge
Spann'd by the arching rainbows, mourn thee still,
In deafening volleys, like cathedral tones
Forever tolling some great hero's knell.
To widow'd veils the wreaths of mist have turn'd,
In grief's unworded token of regret.
The wild-rose and the woodbine both are sad,
The laurels bend beneath the leaden dews,
The willows weep beside the swollen streams.
Down to the violets, thou art sorely miss'd
Among the mountains. But thou tarryest here.
Imperial rock! Child of the solitudes!
Thou spurnest speech. Voiceless to mortal ears,
The unchoir'd hymnal of thy memories,
A psalmody by tongueless sirens sung,
A chant unheard, a song without a sound!
Steep'd in the subtler music of the spheres-
Thine the deep minstrelsy that silence wakes
In listening souls, key'd to celestial things.
More ancient than Egyptian pyramid
Or far-fam'd Parthenon, mute witness thou,
Of immemorial ages. Ere of old
The mysterious Pleiad, o'er Chaldea's plain,
Rose on the ancient patriarch of Uz,
Or, in the star-dust of the firmament,
God told of Abraham's unnumber'd seed,
Thy voiceless lay was lifted. Thou dost sing
A solo of the centuries. Profound
Thy music but unsyllabl'd thy song,
An anthem of the infinite. Alone
Of all the landmarks in this region left,
Thou pratest of a prehistoric past,
Of which no lingering echo now survives.
Thou dreamest of an unremember'd world,
Beyond the musty chronicles of man.
From out the silences, what dateless years
Of time uncalendar'd, have come and gone!—
What eons upon eons, Peleon-pil'd,
Have o'er thee roll'd, since ages back,
In some convulsive agony of birth,
Nature upheav'd thee from her molten molds,
A mighty monolith! Thou mindest me,
Of bay-crown'd Dante, whose majestic muse,
From the Inferno's brimstone fires, leap'd
To Heaven's glorious vault. Thou mindest me
Of matchless Milton, shorn of mortal sight,
But with a heavenly vision in his soul,
That made him prince of seers;-with a song
That came from Eden and reveal'd to man-
The morning of the world. Thou mindest me,
In gentler aspects, of the whiten'd locks
Of Scotia's bard, that minstrel old and gray,
Whose fancy wander'd backward o'er the years,
Before the Northern Kingdom's crown was lost-
Or ere a stranger filled the Stuart's throne;-
Who, seated in the castle's marble hall,
Bethought him of the past, with eye-lids dim,
And, leaning forward o'er his quivering harp,
Whose strings were Memory's, at length began,
Softly at first, and then with surer touch,
To thumb the music of the border lays.
But what a child was he, a trembling reed,
Compar'd with thee, O rock, that standest here,
A giant Ajax, whom no lightning's wrath
Can quell or conquer, yet around whose brow,
The rumbling thunders have for ages roll'd,
And, in whose ark of granite God hath lock'd
The mighty mysteries of millenniums!
What ores within thy treasury are hid
For coming Monte Cristoes to unearth ?-
What rich Golcondas of unmeasur'd wealth,
Still deaf to labor's "open sesame"?
What pageants of the past-what swelling scenes-
From History's splendid drama, what events
Of Time's great calendar, hast thou not seen,
Passing before thee, like some caravan,
With spices laden, from the Orient?
Or like some endless chain of marvels, wrought
By magic's weird enchantment, link by link,
In wondrous sequence, till was told at last
The story of a planet's yesterdays?
What secrets of geology's deep lore,
In fossil remnants of a former time,
Canst thou remember-of a life extinct
Which long ago existed on this globe,
Before our race became its occupants,
When through the coal-bed areas darkly roam'd,
The dinosaurus and the mastodon?
What wonders of the sky hast thou beheld!
The never-ceasing miracle of dawn,
The traveling comet's trail of golden mist,
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