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Words

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