Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy, Unceasing thunder and eternal foam? And who commanded (and the silence came), Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow Who made you glorious as the Gates of Heaven God! sing ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice! Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost! Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest! Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain-storm! Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds! Ye signs and wonders of the elements! Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise! Thou too, hoar Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks, Slow traveling with dim eyes suffused with tears, To rise before me-Rise, O ever rise! Rise like a cloud of incense, from the Earth! Thou kingly Spirit throned among the hills, The Peaks Thou dread ambassador from Earth to Heaven, And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun, 1389 Samuel Taylor Coleridge [1772-1834] THE PEAKS In the night Gray, heavy clouds muffled the valleys, And the peaks looked toward God alone. "O Master, that movest the wind with a finger, Grant that we may run swiftly across the world In the morning A noise of men at work came through the clear blue miles, And the little black cities were apparent. "O Master, that knowest the meaning of raindrops, Humble, idle, futile peaks are we. Give voice to us, we pray, O Lord, That we may sing Thy goodness to the sun." In the evening The far valleys were sprinkled with tiny lights. Thou that knowest the value of kings and birds, We bow to Thy wisdom, O Lord— In the night Gray, heavy clouds muffled the valleys, Stephen Crane [1870-1900] KINCHINJUNGA NEXT TO EVEREST HIGHEST OF MOUNTAINS O WHITE priest of Eternity, around To Brahma, in whose breath all lives and dies; For in this world too much is overclear, Wherefore continue, still enshrined, thy rites, Yea, wrap thy awful gulfs and acolytes To Meadows But since primeval Power upreared thy heights And though thy loftier brother shall be king, And to the mendicant stars and the moon-nun, And till no sacrificial suffering On any shrine is left to tell life's sting. 1391 Cale Young Rice [1872 TO MEADOWS YE have been fresh and green; Where maids have spent their hours. Ye have beheld how they With wicker arks did come To kiss and bear away The richer cowslips home. Ye've heard them sweetly sing, But now we see none here Whose silvery feet did tread, And with dishevelled hair Adorned this smoother mead. Like unthrifts, having spent Your stock, and needy grown, Ye're left here to lament Your poor estates, alone. Robert Herrick [1591-1674] THE CLOUD I BRING fresh showers for the thirsting flowers I bear light shade for the leaves when laid From my wings are shaken the dews that waken When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, As she dances about the sun. I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under; And then again I dissolve it in rain, I sift the snow on the mountains below, While I sleep in the arms of the blast. In a cavern under is fettered the thunder, Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion, Lured by the love of the Genii that move Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills, Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream, And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile, Whilst he is dissolving in rains. The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes, Leaps on the back of my sailing rack, When the morning star shines dead, |