Page:A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.djvu/174

168 the horizon. So many streams, so many meadows and woods and quiet dwellings of men had lain concealed between us and those Delectable Mountains;—from yonder hill on the road to Tyngsboro' you may get a good view of them.—There where it seemed uninterrupted forest to our youthful eyes, between two neighboring pines in the horizon, lay the valley of the Nashua, and this very stream was even then winding at its bottom, and then, as now, it was here silently mingling its waters with the Merrimack. The clouds which floated over its meadows and were born there, seen far in the west, gilded by the rays of the setting sun, had adorned a thousand evening skies for us. But as it were, by a turf wall this valley was concealed, and in our journey to those hills it was first gradually revealed to us. Summer and winter our eyes had rested on the dim outline of the mountains, to which distance and indistinctness lent a grandeur not their own, so that they served to interpret all the allusions of poets and travellers. Standing on the Concord Cliffs we thus spoke our mind to them.—

With frontier strength ye stand your ground,

With grand content ye circle round,

Tumultous silence for all sound,

Ye distant nursery of rills,

Monadnock and the Peterboro' Hills;—

Firm argument that never stirs,

Outcircling the philosophers,—

Like some vast fleet,

Sailing through rain and sleet,

Through winter's cold and summer's heat;

Still holding on upon your high emprise,

Until ye find a shore amid the skies;

Not skulking close to land,

With cargo contraband,