University of Virginia Library

So lovingly the clouds caress his head,—
The mountain-monarch; he, severe and hard,
With white face set like flint horizon-ward;
They weaving softest fleece of gold and red,
And gossamer of airiest silver thread,
To wrap his form, wind-beaten, thunder-scarred.
They linger tenderly, and fain would stay,
Since he, earth-rooted, may not float away.
He upward looks, but moves not; wears their hues;
Draws them unto himself; their beauty shares;
And sometimes his own semblance seems to lose,
His grandeur and their grace so interfuse;
And when his angels leave him unawares,
A sullen rock, his brow to heaven he bares.

“'T is curious, Ralph, the naming of these hills,—
Black Mountain from his dark pine-growth; and this
From his vast, perpendicular front of quartz
Cutting the sky, a wedge of adamant.
‘White,’ ‘Black,’ ‘Green,’ ‘Blue,’ were obviously conferred
Out of the settlers' poverty; worse taste
Was theirs who threw pell-mell on Agiochook
A shower of Presidential surnames. Yet,
Why nickname all this grandeur? ‘Ragged,’ ‘Bald,’
‘Toad,’ ‘Snout,’ and ‘Hunchback,’—so you hear them called
Among the farmers roundabout.
“One day
We went out on a christening-tour, two girls
And I; we said the red man should receive
His own again, and with Chocorua
And Passaconaway, should Paugus stand.
That crouching shape, a headless heap afar,
Glittering as if with barbarous ornaments,
Suits well the sachem whose wild howl resounds
Through history like the war-whoop of the wind.
And all that craggy chaos at his side
Shall be the Wahwa Hills, for the grim chief
Who after Paugus trails uncertainty
Of blood-stained memory, in dim ruin lost.
And that bright cone of perfect emerald
Whose trout-streams flow through birchen intervales,—
An angler's Paradise,—that shall be called
For Wannalancet, peacefullest of all
The forest sagamores, the one who loved
The white man best, found him most treacherous.
“The mighty name of Passaconaway,
Honored of all his tribe, and honored too
Of pioneers, with whom he held firm truce,
Life-long, rests fitly on yon pyramid
Of stately greenness. Were he sorcerer
Or not, he is a cloud-compeller still.

“Beside him leans Chocorua from his hold,
With the curse stiffened on his silent lips,
Gazing upon the shadow of himself
In his lake-mirror. Nobly picturesque
Is ragged, legend-wrapped Chocorua,
Leader of this long file of mountain-shapes,
Most human-seeming in his sharp contours.

Here is a picture of him, from the same
Stray rhymer's pencil, showing possible moods
Of this most moody mountain-sagamore,
Who, savage as he is, knows how to smile.