ON THE JELLICO SPUR OF THE CUMBERLANDS
To ...
You remember how the mist,
When we climbed to Devil's Den,
Pearl-white in the mountain glen,
And above us, amethyst,
Throbbed and circled? then away,
Through the wildwoods opposite,
Torn and scattered, morning-lit,
Vanished into dewy gray?—
Vague as in romance we saw,
From the fog one riven trunk,
Talon-like with branches shrunk,
Thrust a monster dragon claw.
And we climbed for hours through
The dawn-dripping Jellicoes,
To a wooded rock, whence those
Undulating leagues of blue
Summits,—mountain-chains that lie
Dark with forest, bar on bar,—
Ranged their wild, irregular,
Purple peaks beneath a sky
Ocean-azure. Range on range
Billowed their enormous spines,
Where the rocks and priestly pines
Sat eternal, without change.
We were sons of Nature then:
She had taken us to her,
Drawn us, bound with brier and burr,
Closer her than other men:
Intimates of all her moods,
From her bloom-anointed looks,
Wisdom of no man-made books
Learned we in those solitudes:
How the seed contained the flower;
How the acorn held the oak;
How within the vine awoke
The wild impulse still to tower:
How in fantasy or mirth,
Springing when she summoned there,
Sponge-like fungi everywhere
Bulged, exuded from the earth:
Coral-vegetable things,
That the underworld exhaled,
Bulbous, fluted, ribbed, and scaled,
Many colored and in rings,
Like the Indian-Pipe that grew
Pink and white in loamy cracks,
Flowers of a natural wax,
She had turned her fancy to.—
On that laureled precipice,
Where the chestnuts dropped their burrs,
Warm with balsam of the firs,
First we felt her mother-kiss
Full of heaven and the wind;
While the forests, wood on wood,
Murmured like a multitude
Giving praise where none hath sinned.—
Freedom met us there; we saw
Freedom giving audience;
In her face the eloquence,
Lightning-like, of love and law:
Round her, on majestic hips,
Lounged the giant mountains, where
Streaming cataracts tossed their hair,
God and thunder on their lips.—
Oft an eagle, or a hawk,
Or a scavenger, we knew
Winged above us through the blue
By its shadow on the rock.
Or a cloud of templed white
Moved, a lazy berg of pearl,
Through the sky's pacific swirl,
Shot with cool, cerulean light.
So we dreamed an hour upon
That high rock the lichens mossed,
While around us, glimmering, tossed
Golden mintings of the sun:
Then arose; and a ravine,
Which a torrent once had worn,
Made our roadway to the corn
In the valley, deep and green;
And the farm-house with its bees,
Where old-fashioned flowers spun
Gay rag-carpets in the sun,
Gray among the apple-trees.
Here we watched the evening fall:
O'er Wolf Mountain sunset made,
Huge, a rhododendron, rayed
Round the sun's cloud-calyxed ball.
Then through scents of herb and soil,
To the mining-camp we turned,
In the twinkling dusk discerned
With its white-washed homes of toil.
[OMITTED]
Ah, those nights!—We wandered forth
On some haunted mountain path,
When the moon rose late; and rathe
The large stars, sowed south and north,
Splashed with gold the purple skies;
And the milky zodiac,
Rolled athwart the belted black,
Seemed a path to Paradise.
And we walked or tarried till,
In the valley-land beneath,
Like the vapor of a breath
Breathed in frost, arose the still
Architecture of the mist:
And the moon-dawn's necromance
Touched the mist and made it glance
Terraced pearl and amethyst.
Then around us, sharp and brusque,
Night's shrill insects strident strung
Fairy viols that buzzed and sung,
Pixy music of the dusk.
And we seemed to hear soft sighs,
And hushed steps of ghostly things,
Fluttered feet and rustled wings
All around us. Fireflies,
Gleaming in the tangled glade,
Seemed the eyes of warriors,
Stealing under watching stars
To some phantom ambuscade;
To the tepees there that gloomed,
Wigwams of the mist, that slept
By the woodland side, whence crept
Shadowy Shawnees moonbeam-plumed.
When the moon rose, like a cup
Lay the valley, brimming shine
Of mesmeric mist, like wine,
To the sky's dim face held up.
As she rose from out the mines
Of the nacreous darkness, Night
Met her, clad in dewy light
'Mid Pine Mountain's sachem pines.
As through fragmentary fleece
Of the clouds her circle broke,
Orey-seamed, about us woke
Myths of Italy and Greece.
As, an orb of sparry quartz,
Her serene circumference grew,
Home we turned. And all night through
Slept the sleep of happy hearts.
