Below, beneath the trampings of thy feet,
What caverns vast, what giant rocks oppose,
And meet thy strokes with their unflinching breasts!
How strongly trenched in earth's firm bulwark-heart,
They stand unmoved! What deep foundations hold
Their structures up beneath thy ceaseless blows!
Rising, still rising with the flight of day,
Thy misty stature reaches to the sky,
The Sun's co-partner, rival of the cloud!
Falling, still falling with decline of light,
Thy waters hurl them o'er the frowning cliff!

Are restless spirits brooding underneath

Thy rough hewn footstool, fierce with curbless hate, Gathered round hell-like fires in hope t' avenge ť

Each crushing stroke of thy tyrannic heel?

See! from those heated rocks the frightened waves That fell so cool turn round in boiling pain,

And vapors, as if hissing, hot arise!

In thy hoarse strains is heard the desolate wail
Of streams unnumbered wandering far away
From mountain homes where, 'neath the shady rocks,
Their parent springs gave them a peaceful birth;
In one united voice their grief resounds,
Mourning the loss of pensive woods and vales,
No more to greet their musical return;
Downward, clasped tremblingly in wild embrace,
They headlong plunge and writhe in agony;
Upward their deep groan goes to hill and glen,

*

Till, mingled in despair, seaward they roll,
To swell the caves of Ocean never full,
Repeating loudly all along his shore,
In the sad moanings of the heaving surf,
Like this, the anguish of their ebbing life:

"O wood-crowned hills! in whose cool grottos born,
We leaped to light with chimes of early spring,
And down your deep ravines and shady sides,
Flowed with the music of the youthful heart;
We long, with outstretched arms and mournful plaint
To mount your heights again, and play in love
With the green children of the forest home;
To start in silence from the fissured rock,
And roll in peace along your verdant cheeks;
Oh! when, ye listening hills, shall we return,
And bubble up again within your hearts?
Ye sun-clad vales! that slept in light unchecked,
With visions beauteous as an infant's dream,
How joyously along thy banks we played,
Where yellow moccasins and the wild rose grew,
Like maidens dancing in the spring-time gay,
With tinkling feet upon the dewy lawn.
O blessed vales! shall we behold again,
Your peaceful images and quiet slopes,
The guardian tenants of your pathless home,
Or breathe the stillness of your fragrant air?
Ah! how we yearn to bend our footsteps back,
And tread your devious pathways once again!

How fiercely, yet alas! how vainly now,
We beat against the stern imprisoning shore,
That stretches out its everlasting bar,

Foe to return, defying every siege !

Ye wandering spirits of the land-wind, hear!
We mourn for you whom oft we joyful bore
On loving bosoms where your footsteps played;
Say, never more shall we in your embrace
Be held, nor in your unseen presence sport?
Come, ye blest breathings of the earth, come now,
From glen and grove, and waft us back again
To those sweet play-grounds of our infant days.
Ye mountains! looking down from star-crowned heights,
Whose guardian summits watched us in our mirth,

As parents eye the life-springs of their hearts;

Was it not joy for us to dwell beneath

Your shadows, resting from the noon-day heat?
Aye! it was bliss to cool our sun-struck tide
Beneath th' umbrageous shelter of your woods!
To you, to leaf-clad hills, to shining vales,
Must we now speak that bitter word "Farewell?”
Must we the strife of fierce leviathans

Endure, and ever bear th' oppressive weight

Of laden barks, that break the yielding wave?
Must we be driven and scourged like heartless slaves,
By the keen lashes of the tempest's hand,

Or tremble at the terror of his frown?

We would that once again the heated lip
Of the lone hunter or the hard-pressed stag,

Of school-boy loosed from Wisdom's serious look,
Or herds that stood midway within the tide,

Might draw refreshing life from our cool fonts;
We would that some sweet maiden might once more,
With her reflected image glassed below,

Smooth her dishevelled locks her love to meet;

Oh! that again we might in rapture hear

Those heart-warm words that gushed with new-born hopes,
And loving promises from blended hearts,
Repeated in the babblings of our wave;

That we might see those fond embraces, full
Of Life's deep rapture unalloyed and bright!
We miss the cottage by the emerald bank,
Where merry voices bubbled with our springs,
And tones of prayer were heard at vesper-time.
We see not now the Poet with his book,
Wrapt in the ecstasy of thought, alone
And on the grassy slope reclined at length,
Anon beholding Nature and his page,
To form anew from her loved images
And sentiments of other hearts, combined
With those begotten in his busy soul,
A bright creation for the wondering world.
Ah! not the least, we miss the errant lad
With hook and line of rude construction formed,
And writhing worm to lure the simple trout;
And the light skip of footless keels that sped
With flying sail or paddle o'er our tide,

By mirthful songs or measured shouts well-timed.

Whither, ah! whither shall we look to find
A pathway opened for our backward step?
O Sun! thou only helper in our wo,

Come with thy beams and gently draw us up;
Let clouds that follow in thy regal train,
Bend at thy word from their ethereal flight,
And bear us in their bosoms to our homes.
Come, ere in anguish, as we beat the beach,
To drive the sand or break the heartless rock,
And dig our pathway back again to joy,

We yield to Ocean's power our ebbing hearts,
And all despairing die along the shore!"

Alas! how vain their cry! 'tis like the prayer
Of disappointed Age that asks for youth!
Of souls that rushed down Life's declivities,
In all the madness of their heated hopes;
Man's heart-wrung wishes fall back on our ears,
Like the deep moanings of returnless streams!
Yet one hope lives, a Sun above us shines,
Whose rays, endowed with Love's affinities,
May still return our spirits, when exhaled
From earth, to Heaven's immortal youth at last.
'Twere useless e'er those wishes to express,

To gratify them worse than useless 'tis ;
Those streams, if once returned to primal homes,
Would hurry blindly in their wayward course,
E'en as before from their parental springs,

To pass o'er rocks and through deep whirlpool ways,