For the sands of the desert blow over
And the perishing centuries hover
O'er the imperial Thebes with the rest
While the kingdoms have gone like the shadows
That are thrown on the flowering grass
When the cloudlets wing over the meadows
With a tremulous kiss as they pass,
I have listened to love and to laughter,
And have mourned with the nations in tears,
But the heart has not changed, nor hereafter
Will it change in the cycles of years;
And the mansions of thought that are builded
What are they but a cloud that is gilded—
To the soul with its sorrows and fears!
And alas for thy daring, O mortal!
Since the dead must go down to the dead.
If thy presence shall darken the portal
Where the lustres eternal shall sheu;
For thy path may ascend to the planets,
And away to the portals of light-
In disdain of the earth and the granites
Where thy fortunes are builded aright;
But thy science — all wingless and broken
Shall return, and with never a token
Of its long and delirious flight?"
THE LOVES OF THE MOUNTAINS.
By De ETTA COGSWELL.
When this far west was in its youth.
Where ocean thundered on the steeps
Of new-made boundaries;
Rushed inland with the mighty force
Of all its moon-swayed tides;
Sounding reverberations deep
And loud from iron-bound cliffs;
St. Helen reared her fair young head
And looked to where two mountains stood
In undivided brotherhood,
The kings of that vast solitude
That stretched o'er all this new made land.
Low at their feet lay forests deep,
Interminable, forests long since dead
And buried beneath
Debris of countless ages.
And creatures stranger than
The eye of man has seen —
Huge Oreodons and Bramau^eres
Lumbered their unwieldly bulks along
The margin of lost seas,
And roamed the awful silences
Of these primeval woods.
Know ye these mountains now?
Lo! sundered far they stand,
Old Hood, all seamed and scarr'd —
Mount Adams like a God,
Sublime, majestic.
Cycles and eons have swept,
Thus savage legends run —
Vast changeful shadows o'er
Their hoary summits
Since wild western tides wash'd in
With sounding music; flung
Upward salt showers against
St. Helen's frozen breast;
Since mailed and helmeted
These kingly warriors held
In brotherhood the land.
Long, long, they gazed
In growing tenderness upon
Their queenly sister,
White-browed, serene, to westward,
'Till their deep hearts were stirr'd
And all their veins ran fire,
And jealous hate rose up
Enshrouding them
In black, sulphuric clouds;
And each environment of crag
And cliff and stately canyon wall
Convulsive shuddered;
All the wild western world
Thrilled with sympathetic fear.
The mighty peaks grown rivals
And enraged, hurl'd
Each to each defiance;
Rolled threat'ning peals of thunder;
Belched floods of flame
That in volcanic fury poured down
Swallowed up the forests at their feet.
Spreading desolation;
Burst forth with awful glare
That lit the vast upheaval
Of that mountain world;
Crashing into chaos
Witn a sound that made
Old ocean tremble in
His rocky bed.
Three thousand years they fought
As mortal man counts time,
Then
The rocky forces of the Andean chain
Which walls this mighty continent,
Tore these fierce foes apart
And gathering up the scattered waters
Sent a broad deep river,
Thundering down between.
And then Mount Adams turned
And looked upon St. Helens;
There stole a flush
Of warmest sunset
O'er her virgin brow,
And all the rage died out
Of his great soul,
And calm content
Reigned there evermore.
Southward
Beyond Columbia's cleaving current
Mount Hood in sullen grandeur
Feeds the smouldering fires
Of his baffled hate-
Waiting.
