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[Illustration: Portrait of Author]
Mountain Idylls
and Other Poems
BY
ALFRED CASTNER KING
CHICAGO: NEW YORK: TORONTO
Fleming H. Revell Company
LONDON _and_ EDINBURGH
1901
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
MAY
New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave.
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street
TO THE MANY FRIENDS WHO HAVE SO
KINDLY ASSISTED IN THE ARRANGEMENT
OF THE MANUSCRIPTS FOR
PUBLICATION, AFTER THE SHADOWS
OF HOPELESS BLINDNESS DESCENDED
UPON ME FOREVER, THIS VOLUME
IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED
Table of Contents.
Preface
Grandeur
Nature's Child
To the Pines
Reflections
Life's Mystery
The Fallen Tree
There is an Air of Majesty
Think Not That the Heart Is Devoid of Emotion
Humanity's Stream
Nature's Lullaby
The Spirit of Freedom Is Born of the Mountains
The Valley of the San Miguel
To Mother Huberta
Suggested by a Mountain Eagle
The Silvery San Juan
As the Shifting Sands of the Desert
Missed
If I Have Lived Before
The Darker Side
The Miner
Life's Undercurrent
They Cannot See the Wreaths We Place
Mother--Alpha and Omega
Empty Are the Mother's Arms
In Deo Fides
Shall Love, as the Bridal Wreath, Wither and Die
Shall Our Memories Live When the Sod Rolls Above Us
A Reverie
Love's Plea
Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust
Despair
Hidden Sorrows
Oh, a Beautiful Thing Is the Flower That Fadeth
Smiles
A Request
Battle Hymn
The Nation's Peril
Echoes From Galilee
Go, and Sin No More
Gently Lead Me, Star Divine
Dying Hymn
In Mortem Meditare
Deprive This Strange and Complex World
The Legend of St. Regimund
As the Indian
The Fragrant Perfume of the Flowers
An Answer
Fame
The First Storm
Thoughts
From a Saxon Legend
Christmas Chimes
The Unknowable
The Suicide
I Think When I Stand in the Presence of Death
Hope
Metabole
List of Illustrations.
Portrait of Author
"Grandeur"
Mount Wilson
Mountain View in San Juan
Scene in Ouray
Uncompahgre Canon
Mountain Scene in San Juan
Emerald Lake
Scene near Telluride
Bridal Veil Falls
Lizard Head
Trout Lake
Box Canon Looking Inward
Ouray, Colorado
Box Canon Looking Outward
Ironton Park
Bear Creek Falls
[Illustration: "A Wilderness of weird fantastic shapes."]
PREFACE
_"Of making many books there is no end."--Eccles. 12:12._
When the above words were written by Solomon, King of Israel, about
three thousand years ago, they were possibly inspired by the existence
even at that early period of an extensive and probably overweighted
literature.
The same literary conditions are as true to-day as when the above truism
emanated from that most wonderful of all human intellects. Every age and
generation, as well as every changing religious or political condition,
has brought with it its own peculiar and essentially differing current
literature, which, as a rule, continued a brief season, and then
vanished, perishing with the age and conditions which called it into
being; leaving, however, an occasional volume, masterpiece, or even
quotation, to become classic, and in the form of standard literature
survive for generations, and in many instances for ages.
Poetry has always occupied a unique position in literature; and though
from a pecuniary stand-point usually unprofitable, it enjoys the decided
advantage of longevity.
The mysterious ages of antiquity have bequeathed to all succeeding time
several of earth's noblest epics, while the contemporaneous prose, if
any existed, has long lain buried in the inscrutable archives of the
remote past.
The two most notable of these, the Iliad and the Odyssey, are believed
to have been transmitted from generation to generation, orally, by the
minstrels and minnisingers, until the introduction or inception of the
Greek alphabet, when they were reduced to parchment, and, surviving all
the vicissitudes of time and sequent political and religious change,
still occupy a prominent place in literature.
The Book of Job, generally accepted as the most ancient of writings, now
extant, whether sacred or secular, was doubtless originally a primitive
though sublime poetical effusion.
The prose works contemporaneous with Chaucer, Spencer, and even with
that most wonderful of literary epochs, the Elizabethan age, are now
practically obsolete, while the poetical efforts remain in some
instances with increased prominence.
Someone, (although just who is difficult to determine,--though it savors
of the Greek School of Philosophy,--)has delivered the following
injunction: "Do right because it is right, not from fear of punishment
or hope of reward." Waiving the question as to whether it is right or
not to compose poetry, he who aspires in that direction can reasonably
expect no material recompense, though the experience of Dante,
Cervantes, Leigh Hunt, and others, proves conclusively that poets do not
always escape punishment. In fact, about the only emolument to be
expected is the gratification of an inherent and indefinable impulse,
which impels one to the task with equal force, whether the ultimate
result be affluence or a dungeon.
The author of this unpretentious volume has long questioned the
advisability of adding a book to our already inflated and overloaded
literature, unless it should contain something in the nature of a
deviation from beaten literary paths.
Whether the reading public will regard this as such or not is a question
for the future to determine, as every book is a creature of
circumstance, and at the date of its publication an algebraic unknown
quantity.
It was not the original intention of the author to publish any of his
effusions in collective form until more mature years and riper judgment
should better qualify him for the task of composition, and should enable
him to still further pursue the important studies of etymology,
rhetoric, Latin and Greek, and complete the education which youthful
environment denied.
On the 17th of March, A.D. 1900, occurred an accident in the form of a
premature mining explosion which banished the light of the Colorado sun
from his eyes forever, adding the almost insurmountable barrier of
total and hopeless blindness to those of limited means and insufficient
education. At first further effort seemed useless, but as time
meliorates in some degree even the most deplorable and distressing
physical conditions, ambition slowly rallied, and while lying for
several months a patient in various hospitals in an ineffectual attempt
to regain even partial sight, the following ideas and efforts of past
years were gradually recalled from the recesses of memory, and reduced
to their present form, in which, with no small hesitation and misgiving,
they are presented to the consideration of the reading public, which in
the humble opinion of the author has frequently failed to receive and
appreciate productions of vastly superior merit.
_Ouray, Colorado, March 15, 1901._
[Illustration:
"I stood at sunrise on the topmost part,
Of lofty mountain, massively sublime."
MOUNT WILSON, SAN MIGUEL COUNTY, COLORADO.]
Mountain Idylls and Other Poems
Grandeur.
Dedicated to the mountains of the San Juan district, Colorado, as seen
from the summit of Mt. Wilson.
I stood at sunrise, on the topmost part
Of lofty mountain, massively sublime;
A pinnacle of trachyte, seamed and scarred
By countless generations' ceaseless war
And struggle with the restless elements;
A rugged point, which shot into the air,
As by ambition or desire impelled
To pierce the eternal precincts of the sky.
Below, outspread,
A scene of such terrific grandeur lay
That reeled the brain at what the eyes beheld;
The hands would clench involuntarily
And clutch from intuition for support;
The eyes by instinct closed, nor dared to gaze
On such an awful and inspiring sight.
The sun arose with bright transcendent ray,
Up from behind a bleak and barren reef;
His face resplendent with beatitude,
Solar effulgence and combustive gleam;
Bathing the scene in such a wealth of light
That none could marvel that primeval man,
Rude and untaught, whene'er the sun appeared,
Fell down and worshiped.
A wilderness of weird, fantastic shapes,
Of precipice and stern declivity;
Of dizzy heights, and towering minarets;
Colossal columns and basaltic spires
Which pointing heavenward, appeared to wave
In benediction o'er the depths beneath.
Uneven crags and cliffs of various form;
Abysmal depths, and dire profundities;
Chasms so deep and awful that the eye
Of soaring eagle dare not gaze below,
Lest, dizzied, he should lose his aerial poise,
And headlong falling, reach the gulf beneath.
Majestic turrets, and the stately dome
Which, ovaled by the slow but tireless hand
Of eons of disintegrating time,
Still with impressive aspect rears its brow
Defiant of mutation and decay.
[Illustration: "Majestic turrets and the stately dome."
MOUNTAIN VIEW, SAN JUAN, COLORADO.]
The crevice deep and inaccessible;
Fissure and rent, where the intrusive dike's
Creative and destructive agency
Leaves many an enduring monument
Of metamorphic and eruptive power;
Of molten deluge, and volcanic flood;
Fracture and break, the silent stories tell
Of dire convulsion in the ages past;
Of subterranean catastrophe,
And cataclysm of internal force.
The trachyte wall, beseamed and battle scarred;
The porphyritic tower and citadel;
The granite ramparts and embattlements
Of nature's fort, impregnable and wild,
Stand as a symbol of eternal strength,
And hurl a challenge to the elements!
Canons of startling and appalling depths,
With caverns, vast and gloomy, which would seem
Meet for the haunt of centaur or of gnome;
The gorgon and the labyrinthodon;
The clumsy mammoth and the dinosaur;
Or all gigantic and unwieldy shapes
Which earth has seen in the mysterious past,
Would seem in more accord and harmony
With such surroundings than the puny form
Of insignificant, conceited man.
And interspersed amid these solemn peaks
Lie many a pleasant vale and grassy slope,
Besprinkled with the drooping columbine,
And fragrant growths of all harmonious tints,
Whose variegated colors punctuate
Grandeur with beauty, and fearless, bloom
In the forbidding shadow of the cliffs,
And to the margin of the snowy combs
Which still resist the sun's persuasive ray.
A lakelet, cool, pellucid and serene,
Fed by the drippings from eternal snows,
Lies like a mirror 'neath a frowning cliff,
Or as a gem, majestically ensconced
In diadem of crag and pinnacle.
Down towards the distant valley's sultry clime,
Both solitary, and in straggling groups;
In solid phalanx, rigid and compact;
In labyrinth of branches interspread,
Impervious to the rain and midday sun;
In form spontaneous, without regard
To law of uniformity, there stand
In silent awe, or whispering to the breeze,
The sombre fir and melancholy pine.
And many a denuded avenue
Of varying and considerable width,
Cut through the growth of balsam, spruce and pine,
Which stands erect and proud on either hand,
Attests the swift and desolating force
Of fearful, devastating avalanche.
[Illustration: "The trachyte wall beseamed and battle scarred."
SCENE IN OURAY COUNTY, COLORADO.]
The mountain rill its pleasant music makes,
As the descendant waters roll along,
In rhythmic flow and dulcet cantabile,
In various concord and harmonious pitch,
Pursuant of its journey to the sea;
The murmuring treble of the rivulet,
Uniting with the deep and ponderous bass
Of torrent wild and foaming cataract;
The thunderous, reverberating tones
And seething ebullition of the falls
Are blended in one grand euphonious chord.
Far in the hazy distance, as the eye
With vague perceptive vision penetrates,
Lie the vast mesas of ethereal hue,
Stretched in a calm and sleepy quietude,
Dreamy repose and blue tranquillity;
The eye which rests upon the drowsy scene
Beholds a dim horizon, which presents
No line of demarcation or of bounds;
A merging union, blurred and indistinct;
Fuliginous confusion, that the eye
In viewing gazes, but no more discerns
Which is the earth, and which the azure sky.
But mark the change!
A cloud, which floated in the atmosphere,
An inconsiderable and feathery speck
Of no proportions, now augmented, wears
A threatening aspect, ominously dark;
Enveloping the heaven's canopy
In lowering shadow and portentous gloom;
In pall of ambient obscurity.
The fork-ed lightnings ramify and play
Upon a background of sepulchral black;
The growling thunders rumble a reply
Of detonation awful and profound,
To every corruscation's vivid gleam;
In deep crescendo and fortissimo,
In quavering tremolo and stately fugue
Echoes, reverberates and dies away!
But soon the sun, with smiling radiance,
Through orifice, through rift and aperture,
Invades the storm, and dissipates the clouds,
Which scatter, cowering and ephemeral,
Hugging the cliffs, and o'er the dire abyss
Hover, in fleecy, ever changing form,
And in a transient season disappear;
Vanish, as man must vanish, and are gone.
The moist precipitation of the storm
Revives, refreshes and invigorates
The various vegetation, and bedews
Each blade of grass and floweret with a tear;
As nature, weeping o'er the faults of man.
[Illustration:
"Would seem in more accord and harmony,
With such surroundings than the puny form
Of insignificant, conceited man."
UNCOMPAHGRE CANON, NEAR OURAY, COLORADO.]
The day recedes, and twilight's neutral shade
Succeeds in turn, and ushers in the night,
Whose wings, outstretched and shadowy, descend,
And in nocturnal mantle robes the scene.
A hush prevails! Oppressive and profound;
A silence, broken only by the breeze;
A dormant quiet-essence and repose;
Pervading calm and sweet oblivion,--
As nature wrapt in soft refreshing sleep.
Far in the east a solitary star
Peeps through the sombre curtain of the night--
In hesitating dubitation burns;
In lonely splendor, flashes for a time,
Till scattering celestial lights appear,--
The vanguard of an astral multitude
Of constellations, jewelled and serene,
Which fill the lofty dome of space, until
The heavens sparkle with the myriad
Of spectra, nebulae and satellite;
With stellar scintillation, and the orbs
Of less refulgence, which, reflective shine;
With falling star and trailing meteor;
In one grand culmination, glittering
To their Creator's glory!
A burst of mellow lunar radiance
Inundates and illuminates the scene;
The waxing moon, in her meridian full,
Her beam vicarious disseminates,
And shining, hides with her superior light,
The twinkling beauty of the firmament!
At the stupendous and inspiring sight
Of cosmic grandeur of the universe,
A sense of vague and overwhelming awe;
Of inconceivable immensity,
The being's inmost recess permeates;
And man, the atom in comparison,
In spellbound admiration, mutely stands;
With speculative meditation, dwells
On that most solemn of impressive thoughts,
The goodness of the Deity to man![A]
[Illustration:
"Both solitary and in straggling groups;
In solid phalanx, rigid and compact."
MOUNTAIN SCENE, SAN JUAN COUNTY, COLORADO.]
FOOTNOTES:
[A] Composed at St. Anthony's hospital, Denver, Colo., from whence the
author was led hopelessly blind.
Nature's Child.
I love to tread the solitudes,
The forests and the trackless woods,
Where nature, undisturbed by man,
Pursues her voluntary plan.
Where nature's chemistry distills
The fountains and the laughing rills,
I love to quaff her sparkling wine,
And breathe the fragrance of the pine.
I love to dash the crystal dews
From floral shapes of varied hues,
And interweave the modest white
Of columbine in garlands bright.
I love to lie within the shade,
On grassy couch, by nature made,
And listen to the warbling notes
From her fair songsters' feathered throats.
And freed from artificial wants,
I love to dwell in nature's haunts,
And by the mountain's crystal lake
A rustic habitation make.
I love to scale the mountain height
And watch the eagle in his flight,
Or gaze upon the azure sea
Of aerial immensity.
I love the busy marts of trade,
I love the things which men have made,
Though man has charms, none such as these,
In him the child of nature sees.
To the Pines.
Ye sad musicians of the wood,
Whose dirges fill the solitude,
Whose minor strains and melodies
Are wafted on the whispering breeze,
Whose plaintive chants and listless sighs,
Ascend as incense to the skies;
Do solemn tones afford relief,
With you, as men, a vent for grief?
[Illustration:
"Inverted in fantastic form,
Below the water line."
EMERALD LAKE, SAN MIGUEL COUNTY, COLORADO.]
Reflections.
On the margin of a lakelet,
In a rugged mountain clime,
Where precipice and pinnacle
Of countenance sublime,
Cast their weird, austere reflections
In the water's glistening sheen,
I strolled in contemplative mood,
Both pensive and serene.
As in a crystal mirror,
In that lakelet's placid face,
I saw the mountains upside down,
With all their pristine grace;
I saw each cliff and point of rocks,
I saw the stately pine,
Inverted in fantastic form
Below the water line.
I paused in admiration;
And with calm complacency
I marveled at this photograph
From nature's gallery;
And as my eyes surveyed the scene
With solemn grandeur fraught,
This simile flashed through my mind
As instantly as thought:
As the stern, majestic mountains,
Without error or mistake,
Were reflected in the bosom
Of that cool, pellucid lake,
So our every thought and action,
Be it deed of hate or love,
May be photographed in record
In that gallery above.
Life's Mystery
I live, I move, I know not how, nor why,
Float as a transient bubble on the air,
As fades the eventide I, too, must die;
I came, I know not whence; I journey, where?
The Fallen Tree.
I passed along a mountain road,
Which led me through a wooded glen,
Remote from dwelling or abode
And ordinary haunts of men;
And wearied from the dust and heat.
Beneath a tree, I found a seat.
The tree, a tall majestic spruce,
Which had, perhaps for centuries,
Withstood, without a moment's truce,
The wing-ed warfare of the breeze;
A monarch of the solitude,
Which well might grace the noblest wood.
Beneath its cool and welcome shade,
Protected from the noontide rays,
The birds amid its branches played
And caroled forth their twittering praise;
A squirrel perched upon a limb
And chattered with loquacious vim.
E'er yet that selfsame week had sped,
On my return, I sought its shade;
But where it reared its form, instead;
A fallen monarch I surveyed,
Prostrate and broken on the ground,
Nor longer cast its shade around.
Uprooted and disheveled, there
The monarch of the forest lay;
As if in desolate despair
Its last resistance fell away,
And overwhelmed, in evil hour
Went down before the tempest's power.
Such are the final works of fate;
The birds to other branches flew;
And man, whatever his estate,
Must face that same mutation, too!
To-day, I stand erect and tall,
The morrow--may record my fall.
There is an Air of Majesty.
There is an air of majesty,
A bearing dignified and free,
About the mountain peaks;
Each crag of weather-beaten stone
Presents a grandeur of its own
To him who seeks.
There is a proud, defiant mein,
Expressive, stern, and yet serene,
About the precipice;
Whose rugged form looks grimly down,
And answers, with an austere frown
The sunlight's kiss.
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