Page:Landon in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book 1840.pdf/31

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mountains, gloomy with the past, Ye dark ancestral heights, Whereon the gleams of morning cast The earliest of their lights.

The stars shine out above your snows, Until the world seems made For that one hour of dim repose Of solitude and shade.

What have ye witnessed, since ye prest, Beneath the new-born sun, That shadow, type of those which rest All human things upon.

Change has passed over all below, But none has passed o'er thee. Oh, mighty mountain! thou art now What thou wast—and wilt be.

The proud Assyrian's purple host Swept through thy dark defile, Their banners by thy winds were tost, Which mocked their pride the while.

Persian, and Ottoman, and kings Far from the northern seas, And knight and monk tradition brings 'Neath these ancestral trees.

There was earth's first-born offering made, And there the Cross has past; God's earliest altars knew their shade, And they shall know the last. L. E. L