On the Jellico Spur of the Cumberlands

TO J. FOX, JR.


You remember how the mist,
When we climbed to Devil's Den,
Pearly in the mountain glen,
And above us, amethyst,
Throbbed or circled? then away,
Through the wildwoods opposite,
Torn and scattered, morning-lit,
Vanished into dewy gray? -
Vague as in romance we saw,
From the fog, one riven trunk,
Talon-like with branches shrunk,
Thrust a monster dragon claw.
And we climbed for hours through
The dawn-dripping Jellicoes,
To a wooded rock that shows
Undulating leagues of blue
Summits; mountain-chains that lie
Dark with forests; bar on bar,
Ranging their irregular
Purple peaks beneath a sky
Soft as slumber. Range on range
Billow their enormous spines,
Where the rocks and priestly pines
Sit eternal, without change.
We were sons of Nature then:
She had taken us to her,
Signalized by brier and burr,
Something more to her than men:
Pupils of her lofty moods,
From her bloom-anointed looks,
Wisdom of no man-made books
Learned we in those solitudes:
How the seed supplied the flower;
How the sapling held the oak;
How within the vine awoke
The wild impulse still to tower;
How in fantasy or mirth,
Springing from her footsteps there,
Curious fungi everywhere
Bulged, exuded from the earth;
Coral vegetable things,
That the underworld exhaled,
Bulbous, crystal-ribbed and scaled,
Many colored and in rings,
Like the Indian-Pipe that grew
Pink and white in loamy cracks,
Flowers of a natural wax,
She had turned her fancy to. -
On that laureled precipice,
Where the chestnuts dropped their burrs,
Sweet with balsam of the firs,
First we felt her mother kiss
Full of heaven and the wind;
While the forests, wood on wood,
Murmured like a multitude
Giving praise where none hath sinned. -
Freedom met us there; we saw
Freedom giving audience;
In her face the eloquence,
Lightning-like, of love and law:
Round her, with majestic hips,
Lay the giant mountains; there
Near her, cataracts tossed their hair,
God and thunder on their lips. -
Oft an eagle, or a hawk,
Or a scavenger, we knew
Winged through altitudes of blue,
By its shadow on the rock.
Or a cloud of templed white
Moved, a lazy berg of pearl,
Through the sky's pacific swirl,
Shot with cool cerulean light.
So we dreamed an hour upon
That warm rock the lichens mossed,
While around us foliage tossed
Coins, gold-minted of the sun:
Then arose; and a ravine,
Which a torrent once had worn,
Made our roadway to the corn,
In the valley, deep and green;
And the farm house with its bees,
Where old-fashioned flowers spun
Gay rag-carpets in the sun,
Hid among the apple trees.
Here we watched the twilight fall;
O'er Wolf-Mountain sunset made
A huge rhododendron rayed
Round the sun's cloud-centered ball.
Then through scents of herb and soil,
To the mining-camp we turned,
In the twinkling dusk discerned
With its white-washed homes of toil.
Ah, those nights! - We wandered forth
On some haunted mountain path,
When the moon was late, and rathe
The large stars, sowed south and north,
Splashed with gold the purple skies;
And the milky zodiac,
Rolled athwart the belted black,
Seemed a path to Paradise.
And we walked or lingered till,
In the valley-land beneath,
Like the vapor of a breath
Breathed in frost, arose the still
Architecture of the mist:
And the moon-dawn's necromance
Touched the mist and made it glance
Like a town of amethyst.
Then around us, sharp and brusque,
Night's shrill insects strident strung
Instruments that buzzed and sung
Pixy music of the dusk.
And we seemed to hear soft sighs,
And hushed steps of ghostly things,
Fluttered feet or rustled wings,
Moved before us. Fire-flies,
Gleaming in the tangled glade,
Seemed the eyes of warriors
Stealing under watching stars
To some midnight ambuscade;
To the Indian village there,
Wigwamed with the mist, that slept
By the woodland side, whence crept
Shadowy Shawnees of the air.
When the moon rose, like a cup
Lay the valley, brimmed with wine
Of mesmeric shade and shine,
To the moon's pale face held up.
As she rose from out the mines
Of the eastern darkness, night
Met her, clad in dewy light
'Mid Pine Mountain's sachem pines.
As from clouds in pearly parts
Her serene circumference grew,
Home we turned. And all night through
Dreamed the dreams of happy hearts.