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THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN.

ALL round the lake the wet woods shake

From drooping boughs their showers of pearl;

From floating skiff to towering cliff The rising vapors part and curl. The west-wind stirs among the firs High up the mountain side emerging;

The light illumes a thousand plumes Through billowy banners round them surging.

A glory smites the craggy heights:
And in a halo of the haze.
Flushed with faint gold, far up, behold
That mighty face, that stony gaze!
In the wild sky upborne so high

Above us perishable creatures, Confronting Time with those sublime,

Impassive, adamantine, features.

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Before the fires of our pale sires

In the first log-built cabin twinkled, Or red men came for fish and game, That scalp was scarred, that face was wrinkled.

We may not know how long ago That ancient countenance was

young;

Thy sovereign brow was seamed as

now

When Moses wrote and Homer

sung.

Empires and states it antedates,

And wars, and arts, and crime, and glory;

In that dim morn when man was born

Thy head with centuries was
hoary.

Thou lonely one! nor frost, nor sun,
Nor tempest leaves on thee its
trace;
The stormy years are but as tears

That pass from thy unchanging
face.

With unconcern as grand and stern, Those features viewed, which now

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How grew the hills; what heats, what chills,

What strange, dim life, so long ago? High-visaged peak, wilt thou not speak?

One word for all our learnèd wrangle!

What earthquakes shaped, what glaciers scraped,

That nose, and gave the chin its angle?

Our pygmy thought to thee is naught,
Our petty questionings are vain;
In its great trance thy countenance
Knows not compassion nor dis-
dain.

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stream,

Gray eidolon! so quickly gone,

When eyes that make thee onward move;

Whose vast pretence of permanence
A little progress can disprove!
Like some huge wraith of human
faith

That to the mind takes form and
measure;

Grim monolith of creed or myth, Outlined against the eternal azure!

O Titan, how dislimned art thou!
A withered cliff is all we see;
That giant nose, that grand repose,
Have in a moment ceased to be;
Or still depend on lines that blend,
On merging shapes, and sight, and

distance,

And in the mind alone can find Imaginary brief existence!

STANZAS FROM "SERVICE."

Boughs wave, storms break, and WELL might red shame my cheek

still at even

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consume!

O service slighted!

O Bride of Paradise, to whom

I long was plighted! Do I with burning lips profess To serve thee wholly, Yet labor less for blessedness Than fools for folly?

The wary worldling spread his toils
Whilst I was sleeping;
The wakeful miser locked his spoils,
Keen vigils keeping:

I loosed the latches of my soul
To pleading Pleasure,
Who stayed one little hour, and stole
My heavenly treasure.

A friend for friend's sake will endure Sharp provocations:

And knaves are cunning to secure,

By cringing patience,

And smiles upon a smarting cheek, Some dear advantage.Swathing their grievances in meek Submission's bandage.

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MY COMRADE AND I.

WE two have grown up so divinely together,
Flower within flower from seed within seed,
The sagest philosopher cannot say whether

His being or mine was first called and decreed.

In the life before birth, by inscrutable ties,

We were linked each to each; I am bound up in him;
He sickens, I languish; without me, he dies;

I am life of his life, he is limb of my limb.

Twin babes from one cradle, I tottered about with him,
Chased the bright butterflies, singing, a boy with him;
Still as a man I am borne in and out with him,

Sup with him, sleep with him, suffer, enjoy with him.
Faithful companion, me long he has carried

Unseen in his bosom, a lamp to his feet;

More near than a bridegroom, to him I am married,
As light in the sunbeam is wedded to heat.

If my beam be withdrawn he is senseless and blind;
I am sight to his vision, I hear with his ears;
His the marvellous brain, I the masterful mind;

I laugh with his laughter, and weep with his tears
So well that the ignorant deem us but one:

They see but one shape and they name us one name.
O pliant accomplice! what deeds we have done,
Thus banded together for glory or shame.

When evil waylays us, and passion surprises,
And we are too feeble to strive or to fly,
When hunger compels or when pleasure entices,
Which most is the sinner, my comrade or I?
And when over perils and pains and temptations
I triumph, where still I should falter and faint,
But for him, iron-nerved for heroical patience,
Whose then is the virtue, and which is the saint?

Am I the one sinner? of honors sole claimant
For actions which only we two can perform?
Am I the true creature, and thou but the raiment ?
Thou magical mantle, all vital and warm,

Wrapped about me, a screen from the rough winds of Time,
Of texture so flexile to feature and gesture!
Can ever I part from thee? Is there a clime

Where Life needeth not this terrestrial vesture?

When comes the sad summons to sever the sweet
Subtle tie that unites us, and tremulous, fearful.

I feel thy loosed fetters depart from my feet;

When friends gather round us, pale-visaged and tearful,
Beweep and bewail thee, thou fair earthly prison!

And kiss thy cold doors, for thy inmate mistaken;

Their eyes seeing not the freed captive, arisen

From thy trammels unclasped and thy shackles downshaken;

Oh, then shall I linger, reluctant to break

The dear sensitive chains that about me have grown?
And all this bright world, can I bear to forsake
Its embosoming beauty and love, and alone
Journey on to I know not what regions untried?
Exists there, beyond the dim cloud-rack of death,
Such life as enchants us? O skies arched and wide!
O delicate senses! O exquisite breath!

Ah, tenderly, tenderly over thee hovering,

I shall look down on thee, empty and cloven,
Pale mould of my being!-thou visible covering
Wherefrom my invisible raiment is woven.
Though sad be the passage, nor pain shall appall me,
Nor parting, assured, wheresoever I range

The glad fields of existence that naught can befall me
That is not still beautiful, blessed and strange.

MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER.*

[From Self-Acquaintance.]

ILL-CHOSEN PURSUITS.

THE blind at an easel, the palsied with a graver, the halt making for the goal,
The deaf ear tuning psaltery, the stammerer discoursing eloquence, -
What wonder if all fail? the shaft flieth wide of the mark,
Alike if itself be crooked, or the bow be strung awry;

And the mind which were excellent in one way, but foolishly toileth in another,

What is it but an ill-strung bow, and its aim a crooked arrow?

By knowledge of self, thou provest thy powers; put not the racer to the

plough,

Nor goad the toilsome ox to wager his slowness with the fleet.

The extracts from this author are from Proverbial Philosophy.

[From Fame.]

THE DIGNITY AND PATIENCE OF GENIUS.

A GREAT mind is an altar on a hill; should the priest descend from his altitude

To canvass offerings and worship from dwellers on the plain ?

Rather with majestic perseverance, will he minister in solitary grandeur, Confident the time will come when pilgrims shall be flocking to the shrine. For fame is the birthright of genius; and he recketh not how long it be

delayed:

The heir need not hasten to his heritage, when he knoweth that his tenure is eternal.

The careless poet of Avon, was he troubled for his fame ?

Or the deep-mouthed chronicler of Paradise, heeded he the suffrage of his equals ?

Mæonides took no thought, committing all his honors to the future,
And Flaccus, standing on his watch-tower, spied the praise of ages.

[From Truth in Things False.]

SPIRITUAL FEELERS.

THE Soul hath its feelers, cobwebs floating on the wind,

That catch events in their approach with sure and apt presentiment,
So that some halo of attraction heraldeth a coming friend.
Investing, in his likeness, the stranger that passed on before;
And while the word is in thy mouth, behold thy word fulfilled,
And he of whom we spake can answer for himself.

[From Writing.]
LETTERS.

THEIR preciousness in absence is proved by the desire of their presence: When the despairing lover waiteth day after day,

Looking for a word in reply, one word writ by that hand,

And cursing bitterly the morn ushered in by blank disappointment:

Or when the long-looked-for answer argueth a cooling friend,

And the mind is plied suspiciously with dark inexplicable doubts,

While thy wounded heart counteth its imaginary scars,

And thou art the innocent and injured, that friend the capricious and in fault:

Or when the earnest petition, that craveth for thy needs

Unheeded, yea, unopened, tortureth with starving delay:

Or when the silence of a son, who would have written of his welfare,

Racketh a father's bosom with sharp-cutting fears:

For a letter, timely writ, is a rivet to the chain of affection;

And a letter, untimely delayed, is as rust to the solder.

The pen, flowing in love, or dipped black in hate,

Or tipped with delicate courtesies, or harshly edged with censure,

Hath quickened more good than the sun, more evil than the sword,

More joy than woman's smile, more woe than frowning fortune;

And shouldst thou ask my judgment of that which hath most profit in the world,

For answer take thou this, The prudent penning of a letter.

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