Thomas Cole. Oil on canvas, 1843, 48 x 32 ½ in. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT. Purchased from the artist by Alfred Smith, Daniel Wadsworth, and the original subscribers to the Wadsworth Atheneum, 1844.6.
Let not the ostentatious gaud of art,
That tempts the eye, but touches not the heart,
Lure me from nature's purer love divine;
But, like a pilgrim, at some holy shrine,
Bow down to her devotedly, and learn,
In her most sacred features, to discern
That truth is beauty. 1
But for yon filmy smoke, that from thy crest
Continual issues; there would be no sign
That from thy mighty breast bursts forth at times
The sulphurous storm—the avalanche of fire;
That midnight is made luminous and day
A ghastly twilight by thy lurid breath.
By thee tormented Earth is tossed and riven;
The shuddering mountains reel; temples and towers
The works of man and man himself, his hopes
His harvests, all, a desolation made!
Sublime art thou O Mount! Whether beneath
The moon in silence sleeping thy woods
And driven snows, and golden fields of corn;
Or bleat upon thy slant breast the gentle flocks,
And shepherds in the mellow flow of eve
Pipe merrily; or when thy scathed sides
Are laved with fire; answered thine earthquake voice
By screams and clamor of affrighted men.
Lone mountain of the pallid brow and heart
Of fire! Thou art a resting place for thought,
Thought reaching far above thy bounds; from thee
To Him who bade the central fires construct
This wond'rous fabric; lifted by thy dread brow
To meet the sun while yet the earth is dark,
And ocean with its ever murmuring waves. 2