| |
| PERCHED like an eagle on this kingly height, | |
| That towers toward heaven above all neighboring heights, | |
| Owning no mightier but the King of kings, | |
| I look abroad on what seems boundless space, | |
| And feel in every nerve and pulsing vein | 5 |
| A deep thrill of my immortality. | |
| How desolate is all around! No tree, | |
| Or shrub, or blade, or blossom ever springs | |
| Amid these bald and blackened rocks; no wing | |
| Save the fell vulture’s ever fans the thin | 10 |
| And solemn atmosphere; no rain e’er falls | |
| From passing clouds,—for this stupendous peak | |
| Is lifted far above the summer storm, | |
| Its thunders and its lightnings. As I hold | |
| Strange converse with the genius of the place, | 15 |
| I feel as if I were a demigod, | |
| And waves of thought seem beating on my soul | |
| As ocean billows on a rocky shore | |
O’erstrown with mouldering wrecks.
I look abroad, | |
| And to my eyes the whole world seems unrolled | 20 |
| As ’t were an open scroll. The beautiful, | |
| Grand, and majestic, near and far, are blent | |
| Like colors in the bow upon the cloud. | |
| Illimitable plains, with myriad flowers, | |
| White, blue, and crimson, like our country’s flag; | 25 |
| The green of ancient forests, like the green | |
| Of the old ocean wrinkled by the winds; | |
| Cities and towns, dim and mysterious, | |
| Like something pictured in the dreams of sleep; | |
| A hundred streams, with all their wealth of isles, | 30 |
| Some bright and clear, and some with gauze-like mists | |
| Half veiled like beauty’s cheek; tall mountain-chains, | |
| Stretching afar to the horizon’s verge, | |
| With an intenser blue than that of heaven, | |
| Forever beckoning to the human soul | 35 |
| To fly from pinnacle to pinnacle | |
| Like an exulting storm-bird: these, all these, | |
| Sink deep into my spirit like a spell | |
| From God’s own spirit, and I can but bow | |
| To Nature’s awful majesty, and weep | 40 |
As if my head were waters.
Fare thee well, | |
| Old peak, bold monarch of the subject clouds, | |
| That crouch in reverence at thy feet; I go | |
| Afar from thee—to stand where now I stand, | |
| Oh, nevermore. Yet through my few brief years | 45 |
| Of mortal being, these wild wondrous scenes, | |
| On which thou gazest out eternally, | |
| Will be a picture graven on my life, | |
| A portion of my never-dying soul. | |
| What God has pictured Time may not erase. | 50 |
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