Icing the pole, or in the torrid (. . . ) Dark-heaving; boundless, endless, and sublime; The image of Eternity; the throne Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime The (...) of the deep are made; each zone Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, ( . Morning. BUT who the melodies of morn can tell? BYRON. ) bell; ). The (. . . ) brook babbling down the mountain side; In the lone valley; echoing far and wide There was a roaring in the wind all night, BEATTIE. ) and bright; The birds are singing in the distant woods; ) with pleasant noise of waters. All things that love the sun are out of doors: The sky rejoices in the morning's birth; And, with her feet, she from the plashy earth Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run. WORDSWORTH. Evening. Он, Hesperus! thou bringest all good things; ) birds the parent's brooding wings; BYRON Now came still evening on, and twilight gray MILTON. LESSON CVII. THANKS TO GOD FOR MOUNTAINS. THERE is a charm connected with mountains so powerful, that the merest mention of them, the merest sketch of their magnificent features, kindles the imagination, and carries the spirit at once into the bosom of their enchanted regions. How the mind is filled with their vast solitude! How the inward eye is fixed on their silent, their sublime, their everlasting peaks! How our hearts bound to the music of their solitary cries, to the tinkle of their gushing rills, to the sound of their cataracts! How inspiriting are the odors that breathe from the upland turf, from the rock-hung flower, from the hoary and solemn pine! How beautiful are those lights and shadows thrown abroad, and that fine, transparent haze which is diffused over the valleys and lower slopes as over a vast, inimitable picture! Whoever has not seen the rich and russet hues of distant slopes and eminences, the livid gashes of ravines and precipices, the white glittering line of falling waters, and the cloud tumultuously whirling round the lofty summit; and then stood panting on that summit, and beheld the clouds alternately gather and break over a thousand giant peaks and ridges of every varied hue, but all silent as images of eternity; and cast his gaze over lakes, and forests, and smoking towns, and wide lands to the very ocean, in all their gleaming and reposing beauty, knows nothing of the treasures of pictorial wealth which his own country possesses. When we indulge the imagination, and give it free charter to range through the glorious ridges of continental mountains, through Alps, Apennines, or Andes, how is it possessed and absorbed by all the awful magnificence of their scenery and character! The sky-ward and inaccessible pinnacles, the Palaces where nature thrones the dark Alpine forests, the savage rocks and precipices, the fearful and unfathomable chasms filled with the sound of everprecipitating waters; the cloud, the silence, the avalanche, the cavernous gloom, the terrible visitations of heaven's concentrated lightning, darkness, and thunder; or the sweeter features of living, rushing streams, spicy odors of flower and shrub, fresh, spirit-elating breezes sounding through the dark pine grove; the ever-varying lights and shadows, and aerial hues; the wide prospects, and, above all, the simple inhabitants! Thanks be to God for mountains! is often the exclamation of my heart, as I trace the history of the world. From age to age, they have been the last friends of man. In a thousand extremities they have saved him. What great hearts have throbbed in their defiles from the days of Leonidas to those of Andreas Hofer! What lofty souls, what tender hearts, what poor and persecuted creatures have they sheltered in their stony bosoms, from the weapons and tortures of their fellow men! Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones was the burning exclamation of Milton's agonized and indignant spirit, as he beheld those sacred bulwarks of freedom for once violated by the disturbing demons of the earth; and the sound of his fiery and lamenting appeal to heaven, will be echoed in every generous soul to the end of time. Thanks be to God for mountains! The variety, which they impart to the glorious bosom of our planet, were no small advantage; the beauty which they spread out to our vision in their woods and waters, their crags and slopes, their clouds and atmospheric hues, were a splendid gift; the sublimity which they pour into our deepest souls from their majestic aspects, the poetry which breathes from their streams, and dells, and airy hights, were a proud heritage to imaginative minds. But what are all these when the thought comes, that without mountains, the spirit of man must have bowed to the brutal and the base, and probably have sunk to the monotonous level of the unvaried plain? Look at the bold barriers of Palestine! see how the infant liberties of Greece, were sheltered from the vast tribes of the uncivilized north by the hights of Hamus and Rhodope! Behold how the Alps describe their magnificent crescent, inclining their opposite extremities to the Adriatic and Tyrrhine Seas, locking up Italy from the Gallic and Teutonic hordes, till the power and spirit of Rome had reached their maturity, and she had opened the wide forest of Europe to the light, spread far her laws and language, and planted the seeds of many mighty nations! Thanks to God for mountains! Their colossal firmness seems almost to break the current of time itself. The geologist in them searches for traces of the early world, and it is there too, that man, resisting the revolutions of lower regions, retains through innumerable years his habits and his rights. While a multitude of changes has remolded the people of Europe, while languages, and laws, and dynasties, and creeds, have passed over it like shadows over the landscape, the children of the Celt and the Goth, who fled to the mountains a thousand years ago, are found there now, and show us in face and figure, in language and garb, what their fathers were; show us a fine contrast with the modern tribes dwelling below and around them; and show us, moreover, how adverse is the spirit of the mountain to mutability, and that there the fiery heart of Freedom is found forever. HOWITT. LESSON CVIII. HYMN OF THE MOUNTAINEERS. FOR the strength of the hills we bless thee, Thou hast made thy children mighty, By the touch of the mountain sod. Thou hast fixed our ark of refuge, Where the spoiler's feet ne'er trod; We are watchers of a beacon 'Mid the silence of the sky: For the strength of the hills we bless thee, For the dark, resounding caverns, For the strength of the hills we bless thee, The royal eagle darteth On his quarry from the hights, And the stag that knows no master, Seeks there his wild delights; But we, for thy communion, Have sought the mountain sod; For the strength of the hills we bless thee, The banner of the chieftain, Far, far, below us waves; The war-horse of the spearman Cannot reach our lofty caves; Thy dark clouds wrap the threshold Of freedom's last abode; For the strength of the hills we bless thee, Our God, our fathers' God! MRS. HEMANS. |