WHAT shall I see if I ever go
Over the mountains high?
Now I can see but the peaks of snow,
Crowning the cliffs where the pine-trees grow,
Waiting and longing to rise
Nearer the beckoning skies.
The eagle is rising far away
Over the mountains high;
Rowing along in the radiant day,
With mighty strokes, to his distant prey :
Where he will, swooping downward;
Where he will, sailing onward.
Apple-tree, longest thou not to go
Over the mountains high?
Gladly thou growest in summer's glow;
Patiently waitest through winter's snow;
Though birds on thy branches swing
Thou knowest not what they sing.
Birds, with your chattering, why did ye come
Over the mountains high?
Beyond, in a sunnier land, ye could roam,
And nearer to heaven could build your home :
Why have ye come to bring
Longing, without your wing?
Shall I, then, never, never flee
Over the mountains high?
Rocky walls, will ye always be
Prisons, until ye are tombs, for me-
Until I lie at your feet,
Wrapped in my winding-sheet?
Away! I will away, far away,
Over the mountains high:
Here I am sinking lower each day,
Though my spirit has chosen the loftiest way : Let her in freedom fly,
Not beat on the walls and die!
Once, I know, I shall journey far,
Over the mountains high.
Lord, is thy door already ajar?
Dear is the home where my loved ones are;
But bar it a while from me,
And help me to long for thee.
ASTWARD as far as the eye can see,
Still castward, eastward endlessly,
The sparkle and tremor of purple sea
That rises before you, a flickering hill,
On and on to the shut of the sky;
And, beyond, you fancy it sloping until
The same multitudinous throb and thrill
That vibrate under your dizzy eye,
In ripples of orange and pink, are sent
Where the poppied sails doze on the yard,
And the clumsy junk and proa lie,
Sunk deep with precious woods and nard,
'Mid the palmy isles of the Orient.
Those leaning towers of clouded white,
On the farthest brink of doubtful ocean,
That shorten and shorten out of sight,
Yet seem on the self-same spot to stay,
Receding with a motionless motion,
Fading to dubious films of gray,
Lost, dimly found, then vanished wholly,
Will rise again, the great world under,
First films, then towers, then high-heaped clouds,
Whose nearing outlines sharpen slowly
Into tall ships with cobweb shrouds,
That fill long Mongol eyes with wonder,
Crushing the violet wave to spray,
Past some low headland of Cathay :
What was that sigh that seemed so near,
Chilling your fancy to the core?
'Tis only the sad old sea you hear,
That seems to seek for evermore
Something it cannot find, and so,
Sighing, seeks on, and tells its woe
To the pitiless breakers of Appledore.
J. R. Lowell.
FROM "PARACELSUS."
"The sad rhyme of the men who proudly clung To their first fault, and withered in their pride."
VER the sea our galleys went,
With cleaving prows in order brave,
To a speeding wind and a bounding wave—
A gallant armament :
Each bark built out of a forest tree,
Left leafy and rough as first it grew,
And nailed all over the gaping sides,
Within and without, with black-bull hides,
Seethed in fat and suppled in flame,
To bear the playful billows' game.
So each good ship was rude to see,
Rude and bare to the outward view,
But each upbore a stately tent ;
Where cedar pales in scented row
Kept out the flakes of the dancing brine:
And an awning drooped the mast below,
In fold on fold of the purple fine,
That neither noon-tide, nor star-shine,
Nor moonlight cold which maketh mad,
Might pierce the regal tenement.
When the sun dawned, oh, gay and glad
We set the sail and plied the oar ;
But when the night-wind blew like breath,
For joy of one day's voyage more,
We sang together on the wide sea,
Like men at peace on a peaceful shore ;
Each sail was loosed to the wind so free,
Each helm made sure by the twilight star,
And in a sleep as calm as death,
We, the strangers from afar,
Lay stretched along, each weary crew
In a circle round its wondrous tent,
Whence gleamed soft light and curled rich scent,
And, with light and perfume, music too :
So the stars wheeled round, and the darkness past,
And at morn we started beside the mast,
And still each ship was sailing fast!
One morn the land appeared! a speck
Dim trembling betwixt sea and sky.
"Avoid it," cried our pilot, "check
The shout, restrain the longing eye!"
But the heaving sea was black behind
For many a night and many a day,
And land, though but a rock, drew nigh;
So we broke the cedar pales away,
Let the purple awning flap in the wind,
And a statue bright was on every deck!
We shouted, every man of us,
And steered right into the harbor thus,
With pomp and pæan glorious.
An hundred shapes of lucid stone!
All day we built a shrine for each—
A shrine of rock for every one-
Nor paused we, till in the westering sun
We sate together on the beach
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