Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/343

THE MOUNTAIN Yet still a goodly height it seems

From which the mountain pours his streams,

Or hinders, with caressing hands,

The sunlight seeking other lands.

Like some great giant, strong and proud,

He fronts the lowering thunder-cloud,

And wrests its treasures, to bestow

A guerdon on the realm below;

Or, by the deluge roused from sleep

Within his bristling forest-keep,

Shakes all his pines, and far and wide

Sends down a rich, imperious tide.

At night the whistling tempests meet

In tryst upon his topmost seat,

And all the phantoms of the sky

Frolic and gibber, storming by.

By day I see the ocean-mists

Float with the current where it lists,

And from my summit I can hail

Cloud-vessels passing on the gale,—

The stately argosies of air,—

And parley with the helmsmen there;

Can probe their dim, mysterious source,

Ask of their cargo and their course,—

''Whence come? where bound?''—and wait reply,

As, all sails spread, they hasten by.

If foiled in what I fain would know,

Again I turn my eyes below

And eastward, past the hither mead

Where all day long the cattle feed,

A crescent gleam my sight allures

And clings about the hazy moors,—

The great, encircling, radiant sea,

Alone in its immensity.

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