Calls from the deep the wanderer to his home.
The sun in cloudless majesty, as king
Of nature, kindled ocean with his rays,
And made the land more lovely; on I sailed,
The haven spread its arms to call me in,
And clasp me in its bosom; there I steered,
And casting anchor, where no storm can rage,
Nor tempest rock me, on the peaceful breast
Of love eternal moored my bark forever.
SCENE-The Valley of the Catskill River north of the Catskill
Mountains.
THE glories of a clouded moonlit night—
An union of wild mountains, and dark storms
Gathering around their summits, or in forms
Majestic, moving far away in light,
Like pillared snow, or spectres wreathed in flame-
Meanwhile, around the distant peaks a flow
Of moonlight settles, seeming from below,
Above the mountain's rude gigantic frame,
An island of the heart, a home of bright,
Unsullied souls, who, clad in purest white,
Their bosoms stainless as their mantles, play
Around the gilded rocks, and snowy lawns,
And azure groves, in choirs like bounding fawns
Around the throne of some imperial fay-
Again the dark clouds brood below; their fold
A moment shrouds the mountain in dun shade,
Like midnight blackness from a crater rolled,
And flashing, as the glimmering of a blade
Amid the wreaths of war-smoke, lightnings quiver,
And crackling bolts the oak's bent branches shiver,
And rumbling echoes from the hollow glens
Roar, like the voice of lions in their dens
Awing the silent desert-then the cloud,
Careering on the whirlwind, lifts its shroud
From off yon soaring pinnacle, and sweet,
Soft moonlight there is sleeping, like the ray,
Whose flashes on a chequered fountain play
Light as the twinkling glance of fairies' feet,
Or brood in burnished brightness on the stream,
Or kiss the tufted bank of dewy flowers,
As if consoling, in his boyish dream,
Her shepherd through her own still magic hours
Such is the brightness on those rocky towers;
And rising in an arch of double height,
Soaring away beyond that cone, the sky
Smiles to the harmonizing touch of light,
Like the blue iris of a joyous eye
The moon is there in glory, and the stars
Shrink from her fuller splendour, and grow dim
Behind the veil of her effulgence. Airs,
As if from Eden breathing, blow; clouds swim,
Foamlike and fleecy, round the landscape's brim;
And heaving like a storm-swoln billow's crest,
Rolls the wild tempest in the darkened west,
Its flashes twinkling through the gloom, its peals
Bellowing amid the purple glens; the rain,
Scudding along the forest, bears the bow
Wreathed round the flying storm-cloud, as it steals
Stiller and stiller through the night—the stain
Of braided colours, in a softer glow,
Bends o'er the foaming river its tall arch,
As if the spirits of the air might march
From mountain on to mountain, and look down,
In triumph, from the pictured circle's crown,
On hamlets wrapped in slumber, meadows green (bowed
And gemmed with rain-drops, woods, whose leaves are
With the dissolving richness of the cloud,
And brown brooks flashing down the hills, and pouring
Their tribute to the master stream, which wheels
Through the rude valley, foaming, tumbling, roaring,
And on the lonely wanderer, who steals
Abroad in silence to that echoing shore,
And gazing on the mad wave, and the sky,
Which arches o'er the universe on high,
And on the flying cohorts of the storm
Hiding their frowns behind a seraph's form,
With soul subdued, and awed, enchanted eye
Can only bow before them and adore.
SPIRIT OF FREEDOM! who thy home hast made
In wilds and wastes, where wealth has never trod,
Nor bowed her coward head before her god,
The sordid deity of fraudful trade;
Where power has never reared his iron brow,
And glared his glance of terror, nor has blown
The maddening trump of battle, nor has flown
His blood-thirst eagles; where no flatterers bow,
And kiss the foot that spurns them; where no throne,
Bright with the spoils from nations wrested, towers,
The idol of a slavish mob, who herd,
Where largess feeds their sloth with golden showers,
And thousands hang upon one tyrant's word-
SPIRIT OF FREEDOM! thou, who dwellest alone,
Unblenched, unyielding, on the storm-beat shore,
And findest a stirring music in its roar,
And lookest abroad on earth and sea, thy own—
Far from the city's noxious hold, thy foot,
Fleet as the wild deer bounds, as if its breath
Were but the rankest, foulest steam of death;
Its soil were but the dunghill, where the root
Of every poisonous weed and baleful tree
Grew vigorously and deeply, till their shade
Had choked and killed each wholesome plant, and laid
In rottenness the flower of LIBERTY-
Thou flyest to the desert, and its sands
Become thy welcome shelter, where the pure
Wind gives its freshness to thy roving bands,
And languid weakness finds its only cure;
Where few their wants, and bounded their desires,
And life all spring and action, they display
Man's boldest flights, and highest, warmest fires,
And beauty wears her loveliest array—
Thou climbest the mountain's crag, and with the snows
Dwellest high above the slothful plains; the rock
Thy iron bed; the avalanche's shock
Thou sternly breastest: hunger, cold and toil
Harden thy steeled nerves, till the frozen soil,
The gnarled oak, the torrent, as it flows
In thunder down its gulf, are not more rude,
More hardy, more resistless, than thy force,
When waked to madness in thy headlong course,
Thou rushest from thy wintry solitude,
And sweepest frighted nations on thy path,
A whirlwind in the fury of thy wrath,
And with one curl of thy indignant frown,
Castest the pride of plumed warriors down,
And bearest them onward, like the storm-filled wave, In mingled ruin to their bloody grave.
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