HEAR, Father, hear thy faint afflicted flock
Cry to thee, from the desert and the rock; While those, who seek to slay thy children, hold Blasphemous worship under roofs of gold; And the broad goodly lands, with pleasant airs That nurse the grape and wave the grain, are theirs.
Yet better were this mountain wilderness, And this wild life of danger and distress- Watchings by night and perilous flight by day, And meetings in the depths of earth to pray, Better, far better, than to kneel with them, And pay the impious rite thy laws condemn.
Thou, Lord, dost hold the thunder; the firm land
Tosses in billows when it feels thy hand;
Thou dashest nation against nation, then
Stillest the angry world to peace again.
Oh, touch their stony hearts who hunt thy sons
The murderers of our wives and little ones.
Yet, mighty God, yet shall thy frown look forth Unveiled, and terribly shall shake the earth.
Then the foul power of priestly sin and all Its long-upheld idolatries shall fall.
Thou snalt raise up the trampled and oppressed,
And thy delivered saints shall dwell in rest.
THOU who wouldst see the lovely and the wild Mingled in harmony on Nature's face,
Ascend our rocky mountains. Let thy foot
Fail not with weariness, for on their tops
The beauty and the majesty of earth,
Spread wide beneath, shall make thee to forget
The steep and toilsome way. There, as thou stand'st,
The haunts of men below thee, and around The mountain summits, thy expanding heart Shall feel a kindred with that loftier world
To which thou art translated, and partake
The enlargement of thy vision. Thou shalt look Upon the green and rolling forest tops,
And down into the secrets of the glens,
And streams, that with their bordering thickets strive To hide their windings. Thou shalt gaze, at once,
Here on white villages, and tilth, and herds, And swarming roads, and there on solitudes That only hear the torrent, and the wind, And eagle's shriek. There is a precipice That seems a fragment of some mighty wall,
Built by the hand that fashioned the old world,
To separate its nations, and thrown down
When the flood drowned them. To the north, a path
Conducts you up the narrow battlement.
Steep is the western side, shaggy and wild With mossy trees, and pinnacles of flint, And many a hanging crag. But, to the east, Sheer to the vale go down the bare old cliffs,- Huge pillars, that in middle heaven upbear Their weather-beaten capitals, here dark With the thick moss of centuries, and there Of chalky whiteness where the thunderbolt Has splintered them. It is a fearful thing To stand upon the beetling verge, and see Where storm and lightning, from that huge gray wall, Have tumbled down vast blocks, and at the base Dashed them in fragments, and to lay thine ear Over the dizzy depth, and hear the sound
Of winds, that struggle with the woods below, Come up like ocean murmurs. But the scene Is lovely round; a beautiful river there Wanders amid the fresh and fertile meads, The paradise he made unto himself,
Mining the soil for ages. On each side The fields swell upward to the hills; beyond,
Above the hills, in the blue distance, rise
The mighty columns with which earth props heaven.
There is a tale about these reverend rocks,
A sad tradition of unhappy love,
And sorrows borne and ended, long ago,
When over these fair vales the savage sought
His game in the thick woods. There was a maid, The fairest of the Indian maids, bright-eyed, With wealth of raven tresses, a light form,
And a gay heart. About her cabin-door The wide old woods resounded with her song And fairy laughter all the summer day.
She loved her cousin; such a love was deemed, By the morality of those stern tribes, Incestuous, and she struggled hard and long Against her love, and reasoned with her heart, As simple Indian maiden might. In vain. Then her eye lost its lustre, and her step Its lightness, and the gray-haired men that passed Her dwelling, wondered that they heard no more The accustomed song and laugh of her, whose looks Were like the cheerful smile of Spring, they said, Upon the Winter of their age. She went To weep where no eye saw, and was not found When all the merry girls were met to dance, And all the hunters of the tribe were out; Nor when they gathered from the rustling husk The shining ear; nor when, by the river's side, They pulled the grape and startled the wild shades
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