Glad even to tears, he heard the robin sing
His song of welcome to the Western spring,
And bluebird borrowing from the sky his wing.
And when the miracle of autumn came,
And all the woods with many-colored flame
Of splendor, making summer's greenness tame,
Burned unconsumed, a voice without a sound
Spake to him from each kindled bush around
And made the strange, new landscape holy ground.
* * * * *
=_Albert Pike, 1809-._= (Manual, p. 523.)
From "Lines on the Rocky Mountains."
=_376._= THE EVERLASTING HILLS.
The deep, transparent sky is full
Of many thousand glittering lights--
Unnumbered stars that calmly rule
The dark dominions of the night.
The mild, bright moon has upward risen,
Out of the gray and boundless plain,
And all around the white snows glisten,
Where frost, and ice, and silence, reign,--
While ages roll away, and they unchanged remain.
These mountains, piercing the blue sky
With their eternal cones of ice,--
The torrents dashing from on high,
O'er rock, and crag, and precipice,--
Change not, but still remain as ever,
Unwasting, deathless, and sublime,
And will remain while lightnings quiver,
Or stars the hoary summits climb,
Or rolls the thunder-chariot of eternal Time.
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