Page:Pleasant Memories.pdf/178

And like the watchmen when the foe is near
Shout to each other.
                            Every rifted peak
Takes up the battle-cry, and volleying pours
Reverberated peals, till the hoarse cloud
Expends its vengeance, and exhausted sweeps
O'er the unanswering dales.
                                       See where yon rocks,
Fretted and ribbed as if the storms had snatched
The sculptor's chisel, and amid their freaks
Channeled and grooved and wrought without a plan,
Lift their worn frontals. Here and there, the trees
Insert themselves perforce against the will
Of the stern crags, by coarse and scanty earth
Nurtured in contumacy, while the blasts
Do sorely wrench and warp them, well resolved
To punish such usurpers; still they cling
And gather vigor from adversity.
On,―by those crevice-holders to the lawns
Of Willersly, and to its garden-heights,
And gaze astonished on the scene below.

Lo! with what haste the full- orbed Moon doth steal
Upon the footsteps of departing day,
Eager to greet the landscape that she loves.
Strong Derwent murmurs at the intrusive shades,
That fringe his banks to shut him from her smile,
And higher as her queenly car ascends
Outspreads a broader bosom to her beam.