And there amid the billowy swells
Of rock-ribbed, cloud-capped earth,
My fair and gentle Ida dwells,
A nymph of mountain birth.
The snow-flake that the cliff receives--
The diamonds of the showers--
Spring's tender blossoms, buds, and leaves--
The sisterhood of flowers--
Morn's early beam, eve's balmy breeze--
Her purity define;--
But Ida's dearer far than these
To this fond breast of mine.
* * * * *
=_George D. Prentice, 1802-1869._= (Manual, p. 487.)
From "The Mammoth Cave."
=_352._= CONTRAST OF NATURE WITHOUT.
All day, as day is reckoned on the earth,
I've wandered in these dim and awful aisles,
Shut from the blue and breezy dome of heaven,
... And now
I'll sit me down upon yon broken rock,
To muse upon the strange and solemn things
Of this mysterious realm.
All day my steps
Have been amid the beautiful, the wild,
The gloomy, the terrific; crystal founts
Almost invisible in their serene
And pure transparency, high pillared domes
With stars and flowers, all fretted like the halls
Of Oriental monarchs--rivers dark,
And drear, and voiceless, as Oblivion's stream,
That flows through Death's dim vale of silence,--gulfs
All fathomless, down which the loosened rock
Plunges, until its far-off echoes come
Fainter and fainter, like the dying roll
Of thunders in the distance.
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