The Poetical Works of Jonathan E. Hoag/To the Grand Canyon of the Colorado
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To the Grand Canyon of the Colorado
Plutonic gulf! whose deeps unfathomed hold
The lore of earth, incalculably old;
Whose walls, precipitous, sublimely rise
From Stygian depths to greet the southern skies:
Thy yawning brink forgotten days hath known—
Remote arcana of the cryptic stone—
And thy huge soul (if soul indeed thou hast)
Keepeth the secrets of the boundless past.
Within those caverns, chilly, dark, and dead,
Unstirred by feathered flight or mortal tread,
Where even the bat forbears to take retreat,
Vast nameless satyrs dance with noiseless feet;
Amidst the gloom Pan's weirdest pipings pour,
And blend with Colorado's ceaseless roar.
In cave and cliff the curious eye can trace
The faint memorials of a vanished race;
Here ancient bones the shadowed region strew,
And grewsome skulls the timid sight may view;
What men were these, and what primordial world
Was to their simple vision once unfurled?
Speak, great abyss! in vocal tones unbind
Thy hoary legends to the suppliant mind.
Say if some Titan, born of mist and haze,
Ripped thy rough rocks 'neath Dian's earliest rays!
Beheld thine eyes the nascent orbs of night
First try their pinions in celestial flight?
Heard thy keen ears each dreaded sound that stuns—
The wreck of planets, and the crash of suns?
Cyclopic stithies, burning hot with rage,
Shaped thy dark history through every age;
No weakling man unpunished may defy
Those pits of vengeance that beneath thee lie:
For grim Hephaestus' might, once rous'd in ire,
Can fuse the living world with sacred fire!
Yet in thy midnight deeps obscure and cold,
Presumptuous mortals brave the curse of old;
For there midst vault and cleft th' invaders find
Abounding gems, and ores of varied kind:
Hephaestus, seeing, shaketh not his head,
Indulgent to the quest by valor bred.
O Gulf majestic, of azoic birth!
With shaken souls we view thy depths of earth,
And humbly sing, in strains that ne'er abate,
The Power that carved thee in thy awesome state!
The lore of earth, incalculably old;
Whose walls, precipitous, sublimely rise
From Stygian depths to greet the southern skies:
Thy yawning brink forgotten days hath known—
Remote arcana of the cryptic stone—
And thy huge soul (if soul indeed thou hast)
Keepeth the secrets of the boundless past.
Within those caverns, chilly, dark, and dead,
Unstirred by feathered flight or mortal tread,
Where even the bat forbears to take retreat,
Vast nameless satyrs dance with noiseless feet;
Amidst the gloom Pan's weirdest pipings pour,
And blend with Colorado's ceaseless roar.
In cave and cliff the curious eye can trace
The faint memorials of a vanished race;
Here ancient bones the shadowed region strew,
And grewsome skulls the timid sight may view;
What men were these, and what primordial world
Was to their simple vision once unfurled?
Speak, great abyss! in vocal tones unbind
Thy hoary legends to the suppliant mind.
Say if some Titan, born of mist and haze,
Ripped thy rough rocks 'neath Dian's earliest rays!
Beheld thine eyes the nascent orbs of night
First try their pinions in celestial flight?
Heard thy keen ears each dreaded sound that stuns—
The wreck of planets, and the crash of suns?
Cyclopic stithies, burning hot with rage,
Shaped thy dark history through every age;
No weakling man unpunished may defy
Those pits of vengeance that beneath thee lie:
For grim Hephaestus' might, once rous'd in ire,
Can fuse the living world with sacred fire!
Yet in thy midnight deeps obscure and cold,
Presumptuous mortals brave the curse of old;
For there midst vault and cleft th' invaders find
Abounding gems, and ores of varied kind:
Hephaestus, seeing, shaketh not his head,
Indulgent to the quest by valor bred.
O Gulf majestic, of azoic birth!
With shaken souls we view thy depths of earth,
And humbly sing, in strains that ne'er abate,
The Power that carved thee in thy awesome state!
September 5, 1919.