Page:The Pacific Monthly volumes 1-3.djvu/424

 For the sands of the desert blow over And the perishing centuries hover O'er the imperial Thebes with the rest

While the kingdoms have gone like the shadows That are thrown on the flowering grass When the cloudlets wing over the meadows With a tremulous kiss as they pass, I have listened to love and to laughter, And have mourned with the nations in tears, But the heart has not changed, nor hereafter Will it change in the cycles of years; And the mansions of thought that are builded What are they but a cloud that is gilded— To the soul with its sorrows and fears!

And alas for thy daring, O mortal! Since the dead must go down to the dead. If thy presence shall darken the portal Where the lustres eternal shall sheu; For thy path may ascend to the planets, And away to the portals of light- In disdain of the earth and the granites Where thy fortunes are builded aright; But thy science — all wingless and broken Shall return, and with never a token Of its long and delirious flight?"

When this far west was in its youth.

Where ocean thundered on the steeps

Of new-made boundaries;

Rushed inland with the mighty force

Of all its moon-swayed tides;

Sounding reverberations deep

And loud from iron-bound cliffs;

St. Helen reared her fair young head

And looked to where two mountains stood

In undivided brotherhood,

The kings of that vast solitude

That stretched o'er all this new made land.

Low at their feet lay forests deep,

Interminable, forests long since dead

And buried beneath

Debris of countless ages.

And creatures stranger than

The eye of man has seen —

Huge Oreodons and Bramau^eres

Lumbered their unwieldly bulks along

The margin of lost seas,

And roamed the awful silences

Of these primeval woods.



Know ye these mountains now? Lo! sundered far they stand, Old Hood, all seamed and scarr'd — Mount Adams like a God, Sublime, majestic.

Cycles and eons have swept, Thus savage legends run — Vast changeful shadows o'er Their hoary summits Since wild western tides wash'd in With sounding music; flung Upward salt showers against St. Helen's frozen breast; Since mailed and helmeted These kingly warriors held In brotherhood the land.

Long, long, they gazed In growing tenderness upon Their queenly sister, White-browed, serene, to westward, 'Till their deep hearts were stirr'd And all their veins ran fire, And jealous hate rose up

Enshrouding them

In black, sulphuric clouds;

And each environment of crag

And cliff and stately canyon wall

Convulsive shuddered;

All the wild western world

Thrilled with sympathetic fear.

The mighty peaks grown rivals

And enraged, hurl'd

Each to each defiance;

Rolled threat'ning peals of thunder;

Belched floods of flame

That in volcanic fury poured down

Swallowed up the forests at their feet.

Spreading desolation;

Burst forth with awful glare

That lit the vast upheaval

Of that mountain world;

Crashing into chaos

Witn a sound that made

Old ocean tremble in

His rocky bed.

Three thousand years they fought

As mortal man counts time,

Then

The rocky forces of the Andean chain

Which walls this mighty continent,

Tore these fierce foes apart

And gathering up the scattered waters

Sent a broad deep river,

Thundering down between.

And then Mount Adams turned

And looked upon St. Helens;

There stole a flush

Of warmest sunset

O'er her virgin brow,

And all the rage died out

Of his great soul,

And calm content

Reigned there evermore.

Southward

Beyond Columbia's cleaving current

Mount Hood in sullen grandeur

Feeds the smouldering fires

Of his baffled hate- Waiting.