Works of the Hon. and Very Rev. William Herbert :: :: University of Virginia Library

Who art thou? that with stern and iron tread
Chafest the mountains, and their lofty sides
Indented furrowest with deep-worn glens!
Light gleam'd upon thy birth, divided first
From the dense womb of night, wherein it lay
Unprofitably darkling. At thy touch
The waters of the slumberous deep awoke;
Above and underneath outspread, they saw
The firmament put forth its thousand eyes,
And earth spring fresh from the imbroiled mass,
Clothing her glorious flanks with herb and flower
After their kind, which like a mantle veil'd
Her bosom teeming life. The unreach'd peaks,
Ice-clad, and capt with never-changing frost,
From the smooth plain beneath, under thy tread,
Shot upward to the welkin, undescried
By eye of man; while yet the clouds withheld
Their liquid treasure, and a genial mist
Went up and water'd the whole face of ground.
Life sprung beneath thy foot; the lustful Hours,
Spring's genial step, and Summer's garish pride,
Autumn, and Winter with his crown of snow,
Are of thy following. The things that are,
The things which have been, or await the spell

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Of strange futurity, arise and fall,
Like atoms from the changeful surface stirr'd
Beneath thy giant stride. Morn, noon, and night,
(Whether of nature's course that wheels its round
As at the first, or mortal life, which hath
Its dawn, its midday, and its eve that sinks
In the still shade of death) come forth and pass,
As thou evokest them with that stern voice
Which none may hear, but all things must obey
Spell-bound, and to resist thee powerless.
Joy, Mirth, and Hope, and young ecstatic Love,
Blossom beneath thy footsteps; gorgeous Pride,
And crimson-zoned Ambition, and the glare
Which Glory throws around the transient crown
Of vain Dominion, stud thy viewless path,
Like fireflies on the dewy lap of eve
Adorn'd with brief effulgency; but on
Thou glidest thro' the infinite, and Death
Who holds all power upon the things of earth,
With him who follows in the darksome train,
Hateful Corruption, thy own issue, seems
To wait upon thy will. The shapes of life,
Which hail'd thee in thine infant down, ere man
Trod this strange world, have from its dwellings pass'd,
And other forms behold thee, striding on
With unresisted and almighty strength
Unto thy distant goal. Primeval hills,
That threw their flame from earth's deep fount to heaven,
Have sunk to stillness at thy touch; the sea
In majesty unchangeable array'd
Hath shrunk into itself, by thee scared back
From its original limits. But, first-born

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Unconquer'd and unstaid, still travelling
From thine own cradle to the end of things
Material! in the body, which now frames
This short-lived witness to thy glory, lives
That which shall e'en survive thee; that, which knows
That thou art not for ever, and that all
Which thou surveyest in thine ample course
Unmeasured and immeasurable, is not
Worthy weak man's regard. For thou, e'en thou,
Who seem'st as young and glorious, as when first
Breathing ambrosial odors thou didst spring
From the creative word, thou, wonderous one,
Shalt be o'ercome by the destroyer Death,
And all the things, which are and have been thine,
Be swallow'd in immense eternity.