Page:Oregon, her history, her great men, her literature.djvu/391

390 The peopled valley lay a hidden world,

The shouts were shouts of drowning men that died,

The broken clouds along the border curl'd.

And bent the grass with weighty freight of tide.

A savage stood in silence at my side,

Then sudden threw aback his beaded strouds

And stretch'd his hand above the scene, and cried,

As all the land lay dead in snowy shrouds:

"Behold! the sun bathes in a silver sea of clouds."

Here lifts the land of clouds! Fierce mountain forms,

Made white with everlasting snows, look down

Through mists of many canons, mighty storms

That stretch from Autumn's purple, drench and drown

The yellow hem of Spring. Tall cedars frown

Dark-brow'd through banner'd clouds that stretch and stream

Above the sea from snowy mountain crown.

The heavens roll, and all things drift or seem

To drift about and drive like some majestic dream.

In waning Autumn time, when purpled skies

Begin to haze in indolence below

The snowy peaks, you see black forms arise,

In rolling thunder banks above, and throw

Quirk barricades about the gleaming snow.

The strife begins! The battling seasons stand

Broad breast to breast. A flash! Contentions grow

Terrific, Thunders crash, and lightnings brand

The battlements. The clouds possess the conquered land.

The clouds blow by, the swans take loftier flight.

The yellow blooms burst out upon the hill.

The purple camas comes as in a night,

Tall spiked and dripping of the dews that fill

The misty valley. Sunbeams break and spill

Their glory till the vale is full of noon.

The roses belt the streams, no bird is still.

The stars, as large as lilies, meet the moon

And sing of summer, born thus sudden full and soon.

They called him Bill, the hired man,

But she, her name was Mary Jane,

The squire's daughter; and to reign

The belle from Ber-she-be to Dan