HYMN OF THE WALDENSES

HEAR, Father, hear thy faint afflicted flock
Cry to thee, from the desert and the rock;
While those, who seek to slay thy children, hold
Blasphemous worship under roofs of gold;

And the broad goodly lands, with pleasant airs
That nurse the grape and wave the grain, are theirs.

Yet better were this mountain wilderness,
And this wild life of danger and distress-
Watchings by night and perilous flight by day,
And meetings in the depths of earth to pray-
Better, far better, than to kneel with them,
And pay the impious rite thy laws condemn.

Thou, Lord, dost hold the thunder; the firm land
Tosses in billows when it feels thy hand;
Thou dashest nation against nation, then
Stillest the angry world to peace again.

Or, touch their stony hearts who hunt thy sons-
The murderers of our wives and little ones.

Yet, mighty God, yet shall thy frown look forth
Unveiled, and terribly shall shake the earth.
Then the foul power of priestly sin and all
Its long-upheld idolatries shall fall.

Thou shalt raise up the trampled and oppressed,
And thy delivered saints shall dwell in rest.

MONUMENT MOUNTAIN

THOU who wouldst see the lovely and the wild Mingled in harmony on Nature's face,

Ascend our rocky mountains. Let thy foot

Fail not with weariness; for on their tops

The beauty and the majesty of earth

Spread wide beneath, shall make thee to forget

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The steep and toilsome way. There, as thou staud'st,

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The haunts of men below thee, and around
The mountain summits, thy expanding heart
Shall feel a kindred with that loftier world
To which thou art translated, and partake
The enlargement of thy vision. Thou shalt look
Upon the green and rolling forest tops,
And down into the secrets of the glens,

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And streams, that with their bordering thickets strive
To hide their windings. Thou shalt gaze, at once,
Here on white villages, and tilth, and herds,
And swarming roads, and there on solitudes
That only hear the torrent, and the wind,
And eagle's shriek. There is a precipice
That seems a fragment of some mighty wall
Built by the hand that fashioned the old world,
To separate its nations, and thrown down

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When the flood drowned them. To the north a path
Conducts you up the narrow battlement.
Steep is the western side, shaggy and wild
With mossy trees, and pinnacles of flint,
And many a hanging crag. But, to the east,
Sheer to the vale go down the bare old cliffs,-
Huge pillars, that in middle heaven upbear
Their weather-beaten capitals, here dark
With moss the growth of centuries, and there
Of chalky whiteness where the thunderbolt
Has splintered them. It is a fearful thing
To stand upon the beetling verge, and see

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Where storm and lightning, from that huge grey wall,
Have tumbled down vast blocks, and at the base
Dashed them in fragments, and to lay thine ear
Over the dizzy depth, and hear no sound
Of winds that struggle with the woods below,
Come up like ocean murmurs. But the scene
Is lovely round; a beautiful river there
Wanders amid the fresh and fertile meads,
The paradise he made unto himself,
Mining the soil for ages. On each side

The fields swell upwards to the hills; beyond,

MONUMENT MOUNTAIN

Above the hills, in the blue distance, rise

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The mountain columns with which earth props heaven.

There is a tale about these reverend rocks,
A sad tradition of unhappy love,

And sorrows borne and ended, long ago,
When over these fair vales the savage sought
His game in the thick woods. There was a maid,
The fairest of the Indian maids, bright-eyed,
With wealth of raven tresses, a light form,
And a gay heart. About her cabin-door
The wide old woods resounded with her song
And fairy laughter all the summer day.
She loved her cousin; such a love was deemed,
By the morality of those stern tribes,
Incestuous, and she struggled hard and long
Against her love, and reasoned with her heart,
As simple Indian maiden might. In vain.
Then her eye lost its lustre, and her step
Its lightness, and the grey-haired men that passed
Her dwelling wondered that they heard no more
The accustomed song, and laugh of her whose looks
Were like the cheerful smile of Spring, they said,
Upon the winter of their age. She went

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To weep, where no eye saw, and was not found
When all the merry girls were met to dance,
And all the hunters of the tribe were out;
Nor when they gathered from the rustling husk
The shining ear; nor when, by the river's side,
They pulled the grape and startled the wild shades
With sounds of mirth. The keen-eyed Indian dames
Would whisper to each other, as they saw
Her wasting form, and say the girl will die!

One day into the bosom of a friend,

A playmate of her young and innocent years,

She poured her griefs.

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Thou know'st, and thou alone,' She said, 'for I have told thee all, my love And guilt and sorrow. I am sick of life.

All night I weep in darkness, and the morn
Glares on me, as upon a thing accursed,
That has no business on the earth. I hate
The pastimes and the pleasant toils that once
I loved; the cheerful voices of my friends
Sound in my ear like mockings, and, at night,
In dreams, my mother, from the land of souls,
Calls me and chides me. All that look on me
Do seem to know my shame; I cannot bear
Their eyes; I cannot from my heart root out
The love that wrings it so, and I must die.'

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It was a summer morning, and they went To this old precipice. About the cliffs Lay garlands, ears of maize, and shaggy skins Of wolf and bear, the offerings of the tribe Here made to the Great Spirit; for they deemed, Like worshippers of the elder time, that God Doth walk on the high places and affect The earth-o'erlooking mountains. She had on The ornaments with which her father loved To deck the beauty of his bright-eyed girl, And bade her wear when stranger warriors came To be his guests. Here the friends sat them down, And sang, all day, old songs of love and death, And decked the poor wan victim's hair with flowers, And prayed that safe and swift might be her way To that calm world of sunshine, where no grief Makes the heart heavy and the eyelids red. Beautiful lay the region of her tribe Below her-waters resting in the embrace Of the wide forest, and maize-planted glades Opening amid the leafy wilderness. She gazed upon it long, and at the sight Of her own village peeping through the trees, And her own dwelling, and the cabin roof Of him she loved with an unlawful love, And came to die for, a warm gush of tears Ran from her eyes. But when the sun grew low

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MONUMENT MOUNTAIN

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And the hill shadows long, she threw herself
From the steep rock and perished. There was scooped
Upon the mountain's southern slope, a grave;
And there they laid her, in the very garb

With which the maiden decked herself for death,
With the same withering wild flowers in her hair.
And o'er the mould that covered her, the tribe
Built up a simple monument, a cone

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Of small loose stones. Thenceforward all who passed,
Hunter, and dame, and virgin, laid a stone
In silence on the pile. It stands there yet.
And Indians from the distant West, who come
To visit where their fathers' bones are laid,
Yet tell the sorrowful tale, and to this day
The mountain where the hapless maiden died
Is called the Mountain of the Monument.

AFTER A TEMPEST

THE day had been a day of wind and storm;
The wind was laid, the storm was overpast,
And stooping from the zenith, bright and warm,
Shone the great sun on the wide earth at last.
I stood upon the upland slope, and cast
My eye upon a broad and beauteous scene,
Where the vast plain lay girt by mountains vast,
And hills o'er hills lifted their heads of green,
With pleasant vales scooped out and villages between.

The rain-drops glistened on the trees around,
Whose shadows on the tall grass were not stirred,
Save when a shower of diamonds, to the ground,
Was shaken by the flight of startled bird;

For birds were warbling round, and bees were heard
About the flowers; the cheerful rivulet sung
And gossiped, as he hastened oceanward;
To the grey oak the squirrel, chiding, clung,

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And chirping from the ground the grasshopper upsprung.