Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/194

162   :The last of summer’s suns. Along its tawny gravel-bed
 * Broad-flowing, swift, and still,

As if its meadow levels felt
 * The hurry of the hill,

Noiseless between its banks of green
 * From curve to curve it slips;

The drowsy maple-shadows rest
 * Like fingers on its lips.

A waif from Carroll’s wildest hills,
 * Unstoried and unknown;

The ursine legend of its name
 * Prowls on its banks alone.

Yet flowers as fair its slopes adorn
 * As ever Yarrow knew,

Or, under rainy Irish skies,
 * By Spenser’s Mulla grew;

And through the gaps of leaning trees
 * Its mountain cradle shows:

The gold against the amethyst,
 * The green against the rose.

Touched by a light that hath no name, A glory never sung, Aloft on sky and mountain wall
 * Are God’s great pictures hung.

How changed the summits vast and old!
 * No longer granite-browed,

They melt in rosy mist; the rock
 * Is softer than the cloud;

The valley holds its breath; no leaf
 * Of all its elms is twirled:

The silence of eternity
 * Seems falling on the world.

The pause before the breaking seals
 * Of mystery is this;

Yon miracle-play of night and day
 * Makes dumb its witnesses.

What unseen altar crowns the hills
 * That reach up stair on stair?

What eyes look through, what white wings fan
 * These purple veils of air?

What Presence from the heavenly heights
 * To those of earth stoops down?

Not vainly Hellas dreamed of gods
 * On Ida’s snowy crown!

Slow fades the vision of the sky,
 * The golden water pales,

And over all the valley-land
 * A gray-winged vapor sails.

I go the common way of all; The sunset fires will burn, The flowers will blow, the river flow,
 * When I no more return.

No whisper from the mountain pine
 * Nor lapsing stream shall tell

The stranger, treading where I tread,
 * Of him who loved them well.

But beauty seen is never lost,
 * God’s colors all are fast;

The glory of this sunset heaven
 * Into my soul has passed,

A sense of gladness unconfined
 * To mortal date or clime;

As the soul liveth, it shall live
 * Beyond the years of time.

Beside the mystic asphodels
 * Shall bloom the home-born flowers,

And new horizons flush and glow
 * With sunset hues of ours.

Farewell! these smiling hills must wear
 * Too soon their wintry frown,

And snow-cold winds from off them shake
 * The maple’s red leaves down.

But I shall see a summer sun
 * Still setting broad and low;

The mountain slopes shall blush and bloom,
 * The golden water flow.

A lover’s claim is mine on all
 * I see to have and hold,—

The rose-light of perpetual hills,
 * And sunsets never cold!

left their home of summer ease Beneath the lowland’s sheltering trees, To seek, by ways unknown to all, The promise of the waterfall.

Some vague, faint rumor to the vale Had crept—perchance a hunter’s tale— Of its wild mirth of waters lost On the dark woods through which it tossed.

Somewhere it laughed and sang; somewhere Whirled in mad dance its misty hair; But who had raised its veil, or seen The rainbow skirts of that Undine?

They sought it where the mountain brook Its swift way to the valley took;