e wild impulse still to tower;
How in fantasy or mirth,
Springing from her footsteps there,
Curious fungi everywhere
Bulged, exuded from the earth;
Coral vegetable things,
That the underworld exhaled,
Bulbous, crystal-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,
Sweet 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, with majestic hips,
Lay the giant mountains; there
Near her, cataracts tossed their hair,
God and thunder on their lips.--
Oft an eagle, or a hawk,
Or a scavenger, we knew
Winged through altitudes of 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 warm rock the lichens mossed,
While around us foliage tossed
Coins, gold-minted 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,
Hid among the apple trees.
Here we watched the twilight fall;
O'er Wolf-Mountain sunset made
A huge rhododendron rayed
Round the sun's cloud-centered 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.
Ah, those nights!--We wandered forth
On some haunted mountain path,
When the moon was 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 lingered till,
In the valley-land beneath,
Like the vapor of a breath
Breathed in frost, arose the still
Architecture of the mi