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And guilt of those they shrink to name, Whom once they loved with cheerful will, And love, though fallen and branded, still. Weep, ye who sorrow for the dead, Thus breaking hearts their pain relieve, And reverenced are the tears they shed, And honored ye who grieve. The praise of those who sleep in earth, The pleasant memory of their worth, The hope to meet when life is past, Shall heal the tortured mind at last. But ye, who for the living lost That agony in secret bear, Who shall with soothing words accost The strength of your despair? Grief for your sake is scorn for them Whom ye lament and all condemn; And o'er the world of spirits lies A gloom from which ye turn your eyes. CATTERSKILL FALLS. Midst greens and shades the Catterskill leaps, From cliffs where the wood-flower clings; All summer he moistens his verdant steeps, With the sweet light spray of the mountain-springs, And he shakes the woods on the mountain-side, When they drip with the rains of autumn-tide. But when, in the forest bare and old, The blast of December calls, He builds, in the starlight clear and cold, A palace of ice where his torrent falls, With turret, and arch, and fretwork fair, And pillars blue as the summer air. For whom are those glorious chambers wrought, In the cold and cloudless night? Is there neither spirit nor motion of thought In forms so lovely, and hues so bright? Hear what the gray-haired woodmen tell Of this wild stream and its rocky dell. 'Twas hither a youth of dreamy mood, A hundred winters ago, Had wandered over the mighty wood, When the panther's track was fresh on the snow, And keen were the winds that came to stir The long dark boughs of the hemlock-fir. Too gentle of mien he seemed and fair, For a child of those rugged steeps; His home lay low in the valley where The kingly Hudson rolls to the deeps; But he wore the hunter's frock that day, And a slender gun on his shoulder lay. And here he paused, and against the trunk Of a tall gray linden leant, When the broad clear orb of the sun had sunk, From his path in the frosty firmament, And over the round dark edge of the hill A cold green light was quivering still. And the crescent moon, high over the green, From a sky of crimson shone, On that icy palace, whose towers were seen
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