r ■ 1 ■■.(..■■ 1 i jj', yw.; ' i ■■ r ....■ ■, ■■■" ■ v .! r; ■ "WMMMimmk mass fna Book , Copyrigk^N CBEHUGHT DEPOSIT (1 Dag in the Siskigous An Oregon Extravaganza J. FRANK HANLY When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dew-drop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty. — John Muir : Travels in Alaska. , 5- L> \ Are not the mountains, waves and skies, a part Of me and of my soul, as I of them? Is not the love of these deep in my heart With a pure passion? — Lord Byron : Childe Harold. Copyrighted. 1916 J. Frank Hanly The Art Press Indianapolis / _ AUG 28 1916 ^ ©CI.A437556 ~^> 'Beyond the Over-Hanging Rock: Every. Step a Revelation" m 'noiJBb/3>l b qaj? yi3v3 rAooH gni^niiH-'iovO arij t Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife. — Thomas Gray : Elegy in a Country Churchyard. 12 CONTENTS Once more, Mountains of the North, unveil Your brows, and lay your cloudy mantles by! And once more, ere these eyes that seek ye fail, Uplift against the blue walls of the sky Your mighty shapes, and let the sunshine weave Its golden net-work in your belting woods, Smile down in rainbows in your falling floods And on your kingly brows at morn and eve Set crowns of fire! — John G. Whittier : Mountain Pictures. [14] List of Illustrations Page 19 Introduction Page 25 Foreword . . . . . Page 33 Ashland Town Page 43 Ashland Way Page 5 1 Sunset Page 73 Twilight Page 89 Night Page 99 Before the Dawn Page 119 Sunrise . Page 135 [15] / climbed the canyon to a river-head, And looking backward saw a splendor spread, Miles beyond miles, of every sovereign hue And trembling tint the looms of Arras knew — A flowery pomp as of the dying day, A splendor where a god might take his way. — Edwin Markham : California the Wonderful. [16 'Where Shifting Waters Moil and Play' 17]. roji XI And liquid lapse of murmuring streams. — John Milton : Paradise Lost. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Tax not my sloth that I Fold my arms beside the brook; Each cloud that floated in the sky Writes a letter in my book. — Ralph Waldo Emerson : Apology. [20] Ashland Town Frontispiece Beyond the Over-Hanging Rock . Page 11 Where Shifting Waters Moil and Play Page 17 From Ashland's Flower-Embroidered Streets . . . Page 23 A Wind-Buffeted Sentinel . Page 27 Brave Rapids that Surge in Swift Release .... Page 3 1 Fascinations of Light and Shade Page 35 The Blue Bloom of the Mountain Lupine .... Page 40 A Bank of White Heather Page 41 Merry-Hearted Children Page 45 Mt. Ashland's Hundred-Footed-Depth of Wind-Piled Snow Page 49 A Road of Dreams Page 53 Voluptuous Dells Page 57 Hidden, Far-Away Falls Page 62 Forest Temples Page 63 Garnered-Up Excesses of Spilled Beauty Page 67 McLoughlin's Sunlit Cone Page 71 A Cloud of Pine and Fir Page 75 Mt. Shasta: Every Cliff and Crag Page 79 21] Changing Forms and Phantoms . ■ Page 83 Streaming Through a Periphery of Cloud Page 87 Sylvan Nooks Page 91 Mt. Shasta : A Far-Flung, Space-Throned Wonder . Page 96 Mt. Shasta : Depth, Heighth, Space, Color, Mystery and Calm Page 97 The Moon — Changeful Nurseling Page 101 Mountain Pines Page 105 A White Up-Stretched Waste Page 109 Unbridgeable Immensities Page 113 Mt. Ashland's Ethered Peaks Page 117 Cliffs and Pinnacles of the Summit Page 121 Trial Fires Page 125 Tumult of On-Coming Waters Page 129 Steep and Rocky Desolations Page 133 Granite-Founded, Cloud- Wrapped Shasta Page 137 Forests Primeval Page 142 Hoary Monarchs Page 143 Haunting Voices of Innumerable Waters Page 147 Between the Canyon's Walls Page 151 [22 * ' 87 Page % "age 105 Page 109. uk£ bawbio-idmH-iawoR e'bnsIriaA meriT ■ [« isles of calm! dark, still wood! And stiller skies that overbrood Your rest with deeper quietude! — John G. Whittier : Lake Winnepesaukee. 24 INTRODUCTION — — . Mount Shasta, a colossal volcanic cone, rises to a heighth of 14,440 feet at the northern extremity, and forms a noble landmark for all the surrounding region within a radius of a hundred miles. On Shasta nearly every feature in the vast view speaks of the old volcanic fires. Far to the northward, in Oregon, the ice volcanoes of Mount Pitt, and the Three Sisters, rise out of the dark evergreen woods. — John Muir : The Mountains of California. [26] / 'A Wind-Buffeted Sentinel ". [27 1 O'er these mountain wilds The insatiate eye with ever new delight Roams raptured, marking now where to the wind The tall tree bends its many-tinted boughs With soft, accordant sound. — Robert Southey : Joan of Arc. 28 What land under the skies has that perfect abandon of beauty and wonder and variety of scenery that America possesses? The home of my forebears — the long-ago called Mona, the Isle of Beauty. And knowing the Isle of Man happily well, and knowing America — the Re- public — happily well, I call America, Mona, the Land of Prevailing Beauty. I have worn foot-paths through much of this beloved America, desert, mountain, lake region, far-goings of far streams and fair, plunge of cataract, torture of canyons born when the world was in travail, prairies leaning from the winds, supreme forests where night slumbered softly at high noon, gentle forests where the asters glowed along the edge and strange blue flowers sprung unawares through the swaying shadows of the woods — all these wheres are footprints of mine. Upon long mountains tired of the earth, along their aspiring peaks which watch the eastern horizon to take on their shining foreheads the muezzin call, "The day is come", there are my foot-prints. America, dear land of loveliness, I love thee well ! My heart roams thy unaccustomed wastes what time my feet are fettered to many tasks. I exult in thee as the eagle exults in the toppling mountain crag. "Where rolls the Oregon!" That phrase had alway to my ears Miltonic music. It gave the sense of distance, of urgency irresistible, and of mountain origin. From that melodious poet-phrase I think Oregon has been to me a land of wonder, of awaking poetry, though I knew not the land and scenes; and since, I have trodden many of its valleys and mountains, and have camped on its cascade 29] summits pinnacled with pine, and have watched for days the ever shifting, never-tiring coigne of vantage and beauty of meadow-silence and river-music and mountain- solace. I remember so vividly the golden day I first came to Ashland. On one side, a wide valley, and great summer meadows smelling like hay in harvest-time, and on its other side, a nearby-mountain shadow, — an invitation, and stream at song. The mountain and the stream and the long winding ravine receding upward called me, "When are you coming?", and my glad feet answered, "Now", and my heart said to my feet, "Hurry up and on". Up and on where the mountain led whose shadows held the stream-sources in their cool hiding places, and the mountain now and then would flash a look upon me vigi- lantly and then vanish as it were a coquette woman- mountain. Ah, but that day was sweet to my heart, and all these years increasingly sweet to my memory. And now comes a man of affairs, a reformer, and as far wandering a traveler, who has spoken at this mountain's foot, and who has listened to this mountain's stream a- murmuring in its wanderings to the sunlight and subdued shadow, and the mountain has clambered into his heart, and the stream is found winding away across the meadow of his dream. May he make them fling shadows and music through mystic years across the dreams of the lovers of loveliness who are yet to be. — William A. Quayle. [30 ays ge and ;intain- j .y I first came to rid great summer est-time, and on its ■ ■ntain and th- md ;ng up glad fe "Hurry up and on", i led whose shadows ling places, and the T i , ,V • ,l I ■ ,gnfv/3H->bo>l ■ ."nn'v/ -r. but tha r, who as listened to wanderings t i of 1 ad music through is of the lovers of loveliness a His daily teachers had been woods and rills, The silence that is in the starry sky, The sleep that is among the lonely hills. — William Wordsworth : Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle. 32 FOREWORD To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell, To slowly trace the forest's shady scene, Where things that own not mans dominion dwell, And mortal foot hath ne'er, or rarely been; To climb the trackless mountain all unseen; With the wild flock that never needs a fold: Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean; This is not solitude; 'tis but to hold Converse with Nature s charms, and view her stores unroll d. — Lord Bryon : Childe Harold. 34 d and fell, dl, . ! u A blessed spot! Oh, how my soul enjoy d Its holy quietness, with what delight Escaping from mankind I hasten d there To solitude and freedom! — Robert Southey : Joan of Arc. 36 God's out-of-doors! How I love it! The trees, the mountains and the sea! They possess the very soul of me — the majesty, the glory and the sublimity of them all. The beauty, the silence and the far-zoned splendor of the night; the effulgence of the full-orbed day; the still, enchanting tenderness of the twilight — these are wonders anywhere, but seen and experienced among the Siskiyous they transcend description, lift me out of myself, and link me with the Infinite. Here is the story of such a day, such a twilight, such a night, and such a morning — a day and a night in the Sis- kiyous ! If in the following pages I have conveyed even a little of what I saw and felt, there is justification for this book. It has been written in the midst of a busy life, through a period of four years, as the mood would seize me, in hotels, in railroad trains and in the still small hours. I am con- scious of its imperfections, but its writing has beem a joy, and I give it to the public with the hope that others may catch at least a glimpse of what I saw, and share with me the exaltation and the rapture of an elate and Godful hour. The photographs for the illustrations were not taken by me. For these I am indebted above all others to Mr. Homer Billings, who was my companion on the trip up Ashland Way to Ashland Mountain, and who, with Mr. L. W. Marble, both of Ashland, made two trips to obtain for me the necessary views. Their work was largely a labor of love and of friendship. Other illustrations were furnished by Mr. F. L. Camps, of Ashland ; by Mr . C. R. Miller, of Klamath Falls ; the Com- mercial Club of Ashland, and the Commercial Club of Medford. The illustration of the "hidden far-away falls" 37 was furnished by the Commercial Club of Medford, and is a photograph of a waterfall near that city, and is not found on Ashland Way. "A Bank of White Heather" is by Mr. Asahel Curtis, of Seattle, Wash. ; "Lupines" is the work of Mr. Herbert W. Gleason, of Boston, Mass. ; "Mountain Pine" was furnished by Miss Elizabeth S. Curtis, 'of Seattle, Wash. These three are from Mr. John H. Williams' book, "The Moun- tain That Was God." "A Wind-Buffeted Sentinel" is by Mrs. H. A. Towne, of Harvard, Illinois, and is from a scene on Mt. Tacoma. The plates for the multi-colored illustrations were made by the Stafford Engraving Company, of Indianapolis, In- diana. Their excellence is due to the care and skill of Mr. E. E. Stafford. The book itself is done by the Art Press, of Indiana- polis, Indiana, to the President of which, Mr. Ray D. Barnes, I am under special obligation for many helpful suggestions. The introduction is by Bishop William A. Quayle, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, poet, orator and church- man, who himself has taken much of the same journey and who in a peculiar sense is a child of the out-of-doors. I would not be just if I were to omit from this foreword, recognition of my obligation to my Secretary, Miss Hallie McNeil, whose thoughtful, discriminating care in the prep- aration of the text and in the selection of the quotations used has been constant and unremitting. To all of these friends I make grateful acknowledgment. J. Frank Hanly, Indianapolis, Indiana. May 1, 1916. [38 . Bright spots of color, where beds of wild flowers swing their sweet bells noiselessly. — John L. Stoddard : California. 39 [40] c CO CQ < [41 Bright on the mountain s heathy slope, The day's last splendors shine. — Robert Southey : Rudiger. * 42 ASHLAND TOWN At the close of day, when the hamlet is still, And mortals the sweets of forgetfulness prove, When nought but the torrent is heard on the hill, And nought but the nightingale s song in the grove. — James Beattie : The Hermit. [44] when the hamlet is still, -i3vo ,gr: •itgkl tttibiktob tlsri .risiblirb b^-iBSfi-v-raM" ."eeanaqh ineibsT ojni nua arfo yd b^zziA ztiuil [*M 1 So fall the weary years away, A child again, my head I lay Upon the lap of this sweet day. -John G. Whittier : Summer By The Lakeside. 46 The country is lyric, — the town dramatic. When mingled they make the most perfect musical drama. — Henry W. Longfellow : Kavanaugh. Ashland is a city beautiful, built two thousand feet above the level of the sea — A jewel set in the bosom of an enchanted valley, sur- rounded by the encircling peaks of the Siskiyous and the protecting parapets of the Cascades, in the midst of all but endless summer, in sight of eternal snows — An aquarelle of contentment, river-bordered, mountain- framed, lighted by perennial sunshine — A prodigal dowered with an unspendable portion — a perpetual, recurring heritage of flowers and fruits and grains — A siren, sentient with charm and lure; held in the sensuous arms of enamoring, desire-fulfilling hills; coaxed into forgetfulness by soft, consoling winds, sweet and lingering as the memory of a cradle-lullaby, and canopied by skies, chaste and tender as a maiden's soul. I knew her fewer than an hundred hours. But in that brief while she broke down every barrier time had set about my heart; woke my somnolent soul; called dead affection back to life, and taught me how to love, again. I cannot forget her, and if I could, I would not. The witchery of her form and the charm and color of her setting haunt me. I have thought of her until the memory of her is entwined with every vital fiber of my better self. The knowing of her has so sensitized my mind and enriched and intensified my soul-sensibility, that were I No splendid poverty, no smiling care, No well-bred hate, or servile grandeur there. — Edward Young : Love of Fame. [47 jl. / have a room wherein no one enters Save I myself alone: There sits a blessed memory on a throne, There my life centers. — Christina G. Rossetti : Memory. to forget her my poverty would be infinite — I should die of heart-hunger. In the halls of my remembrance she has a gallery all her own. In it there hangs no other picture, or ever shall. Consecrated to her and her alone, it is too sacred to be shared. And, ah me, what a gallery it is ! And how much it means to me! I have but to enter it, to be obsessed and live again those primal wondrous hours : From her rose-embowered door-ways I see and hear merry-hearted children, half concealed amid bending, over-ladened boughs, plucking with shouts and laughter mouth-watering fruits kissed by the sun into radiant ripeness. From her flower- embroidered streets I behold Mc- Loughlin's majestic, sun-lit cone; mark old Grizzly's fir- and-pine-clad slopes, and look upon Mt. Ashland's dis- tant, hundred-footed depth of wind-piled snow. From her vine-wreathed gates I listen to the ripple of the River Bear, catch the mystic gurgle and see the silvery shimmer of Ashland Creek, and hear the romantic tales its garrulous waters tell. And from her resplendent portals, on a wondrous sum- mer afternoon, companioned by a new-found friend, my eager feet are set in Ashland Way, amid scenes of tran- scendent beauty, on an unforgetable journey toward the snow and silence of God's eternal hills. The azure curtain of God's House Draws back, and hangs star-pinned to space. — Joaquin Miller : A Song of the South. [48 rn : Memory. e infinite — I should she has a gallery or ever shall, is too sacred to be it a gallery ; how much out to ent il wondrous houi svered door-ways I , half concealed amid bending, )lucking with shouts and laughter . Fro Loi the shi ... and i aters : it portals, on a won. riend, my id Way, amid scenes of tran- fgetable journey toward ; ■ : [PH Here, too, the Elements forever veer, Ranging round with endless interchanging; In endless revolutions here they roll; Forever their mysterious work renewing; The parts all shifting, still unchanged the whole. — Robert Southey : Joan of Arc. 50 ASHLAND WAY -«»-ag The stars of midnight shall be dear To her; and she shall lean her ear In many a secret place Where rivulets dance their wayward round, And beauty born of murmuring sound Shall pass into her face. — William Wordsworth : Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shower. [52] 'A Road of Dreams, of Wonder-Wildness, Quiet Grandeur and Multitudinous Delights". 53 Hi ^ Haunted with loveliness, How can I fare .away to other heavens, Missing innumerable heavens here. — Charles Hanson Towne : Beauty. 54 Along this quiet wood road, winding slow, The gentian reigned, an undisputed queen. — Elaine Goodale : Fringed Gentian. From the city's street, stretching between the sinuous windings of Ashland Creek and the weather-pitted cliffs that mark the tortuous limits of Ashland Canyon, lies Ashland Way — a road of dreams, of wonder-wildness, quiet grandeur and multitudinous delights. Crossing and re-crossing the turbulent Creek again and again; winding in and out through forest temples reared in faith, not fear, and brooding, dateless woods; across tender valleys and brook-lulled meadows; beneath sentinel pines and solemn hemlocks; through fir-dark solitudes; along floral terraces and powdery slopes; up rugged steeps, under Italian skies ; it contracts finally into a narrow, shadowy trail and loses itself at last among the peaks and snows of Ashland Mountain. Its length from city-gate to mountain-peak is fifteen miles and every step a revelation. Halfway between the noontide and the end of a matchless day in mid- July, we — my new-found friend and I — left the city and faced the calm-fronted hills and the far-blue bulwarks of the moun- tains. Passing through the outlying-sections of the town, with their segregated houses, luxurious gardens, and fruit- ladened orchards; along the Creek beyond the Over- Hanging Rock and the Pumping Station of the Water Plant; we were soon in the midst of a primal solitude, hemmed in on either side by vertical, high-raised walls, through whose solid centuried-masonry the waters from Does the road wind up-hill all the way? Yes, to the very end. Will the day's journey take the whole long day! From morn to night, my friend. — Christina Rossetti : Up-Hill. V] No sound is uttered, — but a deep And solemn harmony pervades The hollow vale from steep to steep. — William Wordsworth : Composed upon an Evening of Extraordinary Splendour and Beauty. the melted snows of the Siskiyous ages before had rent and torn their torrential way! To the brink of the walls, along the horizon's azure- tinctured rim, clung attenuated pines, sparse and feathery of limb, stirred by invisible, homeless winds. Above the pines, a sky of magical, heavenly blue, flecked with slow- moving, dream-driven clouds, soft as eider-down, wander- ing in aimless journeyings toward shoreless, illimitable seas. Between the Canyon's walls, the forest's chime and charm — its mysteries of shapes and monuments and hidden, summonsing forms; its immemorial lisp, a mur- murous, living stillness; its whispering harmonies, a threnody of praise. For hours we journeyed through a fairy-land, as illu- sive and enchanting as a dreamer's dream : Now knee-deep in the waters of the Creek creeping in lazy languor, or held in placid, meditative pools, clear as sunlight, pure as pearl, touched by winds too soft to dimple their unrippled bosoms. Now lost in park-like glens, and aisles over-arched with deep, new-leafed green, and bending, blossoming boughs ; along paths walled in with dogwood and with laurel tall as trees, and set with rhododendron and red-barked, round-leafed manzanita, a mass of bloom. Now held by the haunting voices of innumerable waters; tender, crooning bars; the Creek's enchanted lilt; The western azalea, hardly less flowery, grows in massive thickets three to eight feet high around the edges of groves and woods as far south as San Luis Obispo, usually accompanied by manzanita. — John Muir : The Mountains of California. [56 1 ipon an Splendour and before had • As, aloi izon's azure- lenuatedpii .- and f. : :-ible, homeles . .Above the avenly blu soft at igstoward shorele. walls, the fa ne and mysteries of shapes and monuments and imonsing forms; its immemorial lisp, a mur- larmonies SstO bns >bo# lo barmoH dfed zuoLdquloV ■ knee-dei ■ ith do :aurel I set with rhododendron and red-barked, nzanita, a mass of bloot the haunt, ling bars ; the ■ And lo, the rifted rocks of the ravine With penciled, old-gold violets in between, The manzanita with its bells aswing To tell of small, tart apples she will bring, The ceanothus with its white bloom spread Upon the ground like crumbs of bread, The poppy lifting up its warm, red gold Our miser hearts in heaven will hold, Nemophila, cream-cup, cyclamen, Azalea, lupine — oh, I know just when My lost ones come, and where the eye may catch Each thronging clan in its own happy patch. -Anna Catharine Markham : A Sierra Memory. 58 / have seen whole hillsides given over to a blue heaven of lupines, sometimes shoulder-high, with sapphire spikes; and I have seen azalea by the mile, with a billion yellow-belted bees all busy at their harvesting. — Edwin Markham : California the Wonderful. the murmurous call of invisible cascades, and of hidden, far-away falls — hill-stilled, distant and dreamy; low, soft sounds — liquid gurglings — and intermittent silences broken by drops of languorous music. Now seated in mossy, voluptuous dells formed of rock and creek and circling sky — wind-forgotten corners — trellised and fragrant with honey-suckle and the slender, trailing, vine-like leaves of the creeping snow-berry. Now pausing where shifting, hurrying waters moil and play, gliding in shimmering sheen with rythmic cadence over pebbly bottoms, holding imprisoned rainbows in their crystal depths. Now yielding to the subtle, insinuating lure of sylvan nooks and vine-wreathed bowers of foliate beauty — seclu- sions of cool greenery hid between the hills; — filled with the fragrancies of herb and blossom, tapestried with ferns and with columbine, festooned with the warm blue-bloom of the mountain lupine, garlanded with lilac and with the white clustering flowers of the syringa, and peopled with the dream-and-wonder children of the forest — dryads and oreads, fays . and nixies, satyrs and fairy-midgets, dis- robed and naked, courtesy ing and dancing to symphonies of sunlight and the thrill of love-languorous, half-hushed music wrought by amorous aphrodites on aerial flutes. And the sun had a crown Wrought of gilded thistledown, And a scarf of velvet vapor And a raveled rainbow gown; And his tinsel-tangled hair Tossed and lost upon the air Was glossier and flossier Than any anywhere. — James Whitcomb Riley : The South Wind and the Sun. [59] Here are memorials of the glacial plows — crags, gorges, cataracts. Here the lordly conifers of the Sierras are gathered in splendid com- pany, led by the unique and towering sequoia. Here also are the thou- sand Sierran flowers, terrace after terrace, all assembled in one fragrant and shining sisterhood. — Edwin Markham : California the Wonderful. Now clambering through brave rapids that surge in swift release, then tumble and rage in quick, mad haste, down deep and tortuous ways, rock-hewing, canyon- carving. Now lingering amid narrow, sun-showered, bloom- heaped meadows — garnered-up excesses of spilled beauty garbed in green and gold, carpeted with violets, blue, white and yellow; aflame with countless, light-lured, wind- wooed flowers, redolent with perfumes — gardens of Allah ; bowers of Avalon; trembling seas of color. Now looking in silent wonder at the tumult of on- coming, multitudinous waters, whipped into foaming tur- bulence and lashed into fury — whirling wonders of power and sound — spouting plumes of mist and billows of foam, forging gleams that flash and die, tossing sprays of min- gled pearl and sunlight, and plunging at last in an im- petuous torrent of changeless, changing forms with catar- actine press and leap, over precipitous declivities into an entanglement of chasms. Now walking beneath gigantic trees — hemlocks, firs and redwoods — hoary monarchs of a long-gone reign, but playing still their solemn primal symphonies. . . . . Where the mountain wall Is piled to heaven, and through the narrow rift Of the vast rocks, against whose rugged feet Beats the mad torrent with perpetual roar; Where noonday is as twilight, and the wind Comes burdened with the everlasting moan Of forests and far-off waterfalls. — John G. Whittier : The Bridal of Pennacook. 60] Pursuing, echoes calling 'mong the rocks. —Abraham Coles : The Microcosm. y!Iii2-IIiM| bH ni Talk not of temples, there is one Built without hands, to mankind given; Its lamps are the meridian sun And all the stars of heaven, Its walls are the cerulean sky, Its floors the earth so green and fair, The dome its vast immensity; All Nature worships there! — David Vedder : The Temple of Nature. 64 This is the noblest pine yet discovered, surpassing all others not merely in size but also in kingly beauty and majesty. — John Muir : The Mountains of California. In such green palaces the first kings reign d, Slept in their shades, and angels entertain d, With such old counsellors they did advise, And by frequenting sacred groves grew wise. — Edmund Waller : On St. James Park. Now standing awe-stirred within the centuried shadows and conscious-silences of wistful gold-barked, storm- coated sugar pines, two hundred feet in heighth, hung with silvery-gray needles — swaying mysteries old as pagan priests — towering upward until their high-raised branches, caressed by quiet far-away winds, give off a still, sad, slow rustling, now wierd and moan-like, now a paean, now waning into a dirge, and finally dying away into soli- tude and silence like the cry of a wounded, vanishing soul. Now descending into dew-breeding shades and sunken solitudes, down into interminable labrynthine depths, where no flower blooms or grows ; where the daylight but half expels the gloom even at noontide, and no sound penetrates the heavy stillness save the forlorn and medi- tative coo of a deserted and distant wood-dove. Now ascending through alternating gleam and gloom along leaf-entangled ways fringed with low-growing alpine flowers; aglow with rainbow tinted iris, rose-colored orchids and nodding mountain lilies, rich in fragrance and in beauty; up through elevated, peak-sentineled val- leys, into amphitheaters backed by forest walls, rimmed by sit-fast hills, and roofed by seas of celestial azure — shrines for Nature's worship ; altars for her adoration, set apart by a wild strange beauty, primal as the world's Lying at rest we hear a long sighing music among the high boughs; and, if you are a skillful listener, you will hear hushed voices within the music — the chorus of the mournful dryads departing before the irreverent steps of man. — Edwin Markham : California the Wonderful. [65] Long thoughts must visit the heart of a man as he listens to the sad, mysterious music that goes out from a tossing sea of pines. How strangely like it is to the wild music that reaches us from the waters of the ocean ,at the roots of the world. — Edwin Markham : California the Wonderful. first garden; temples for the hymning of her mysteries, vibrant with chords beyond all art — chastened with the mournful minor of the world's eternal undertones. Now lured by expanding vistas of dream-like spaces — wild welters of color and fascinations of light and of shade — flecked by heather, starred with paint-brush and set with gentian and valerian. Now toiling up steep and rocky desolations, along the edge of precipitous declivities, over a trail so narrow that two could not walk abreast — a trail fringed with vari- colored mountain flowers and arched with the over-lap- ping boughs of Alpine hemlocks through whose shifting intricacies the slanting sun-rays glint and fade, flecking the sinuous path with dappled, changing shadows. Now clambering up the mountain's rugged, creviced side, toward eagle aeries and splendid isolations, where yellow wallflowers cling to rock and cliff, and the dwarfed and miniatured trees wear spiral profusions of red blos- soms. There at last we stood. Below us, wound the Creek, divided and dwindled now into many tiny, snow-born rills and rivulets slipping from under melting, wind-piled drifts held in the mountain's gashed and furrowed bosom, its truculent babblings hushed into sweet-voiced invita- shapes and hues, dim beckoning, through Yon mountain gaps, my longing view Beyond the purple and the blue, To stiller sea and greener land, And softer lights and airs more bland, And skies, — the hollow of God's hand! — John G. Whittier : Lake Winnepesaukee. [66] £ o H Q < CO ash > Sa, 1 to > to cs- ' — 1 0^ Thou Of all £5 to' c 3- a -« H 5' TO ■n to cs- sa. a s O X o 2 0 en o a sa- s ^ C-3 C CTQ ST C-3 o C s Sr TO o cs- g- to" -5 * to' Co o 3 TO TO 3 sa. 3 P to Co TO TO TO > j3- -s 5' - to o C5 o a. •~-, o -^1 Co ^ s-' e Sr a "i cs- -""* a. o 3 ^J r> Co M s ... ."noifivA to aiswoS ;riBlIA \d And haply gain, through parting boughs, Grand glimpses of great mountain brows Cloud-turbaned, and the sharp steel sheen Of lakes deep set in valleys green. -John G. Whittier : The Seeking of the Waterfall. 68 The sun-forsaken ranges below fell away to dark neutral tints. But the fires upon the crest burned on, deepening from gold to burnished copper, a colossal beacon flaming high against the sunset purple of the eastern skies. — John H. Williams : The Mountain That Was God. tions, sinking at times into mere ululations of sound ; and further yet, a cloud of pine and fir, backed by purple hills, crowned by mountain-blue melting into purple and illu- mined by refracted rays of light thrown from high-raised pinnacles of snow and ice. Beyond the forest and the hills, pushing through and towering above their empurpled crown of blue, rose McLoughlin's rounded, pure white dome, its solitudes agleam with sunset fire. Above us, gaunt and naked cliffs and crags — granite giants formed by Jove-hurled bolts in the chaotic, cataclysmic hour when worlds were made — lifted their lightning-stabbed and thunder-riven crests, in portentious, awesome sovereignty — calm, silent, ma- jestic. From there we saw the closing scene in the day's vast drama — the set of sun, the twilight hour and. the fall of night — and then betook ourselves to sleep beneath the silent, shadowy trees. When the highest peak began to burn, it did not seem to be steeped in sunshine, however glorious, but rather as if it had been thrust into the body of the sun itself. Then the supernal fire slowly descended, with a sharp line of demarkation separating it from the cold, shaded region beneath; peak after peak, with their spires and ridges and cas- cading glaciers, caught the heavenly glow, until all the mighty host stood transfigured, hushed, and thoughtful, as if waiting the coming of the Lord. — John Muir : Travels in Alaska. [69] / know a veteran redwood standing high Upon a leafy cliff in Siskiyou, Looking on hill-tops billowing to the blue, And looking on bright regions of the sky: A cluster of young sons are ever nigh, In banded cirque about him, to befriend When canyons brim with quiet — to defend When lightnings probe the dark and torrents cry. — Edwin Markham : California the Wonderful. 70] standing high if in Siskiyou, ; billow lue, A cl • :• ■ I [K The light of Day Still loves to stay And round that pearly summit play; How fair a sight, That plain of light, Contended for by Day and Night. — John L. Stoddard : Switzerland. 72 SUNSET Then comes the sunset with its purple and gold, not a narrow arch on the horizon, but oftentimes filling all the sky. The level cloud-bars usually present are fired on the edges, and the spaces of clear sky between them are greenish-yellow or pale amber, while the orderly flocks of small overlapping clouds, often seen higher up, are mostly touched with crimson like the outleaning sprays of maple-groves in the beginning of an Eastern Indian Summer. Soft, mellow purple flushes the sky to the zenith and fills the air, fairly steeping and transfiguring the islands and making all the water look like wine. — John Muir : Travels in Alaska. 74 j sunset with its purple and gold, not a] i the horizon, but oftentimes filling all the sky. i 'oud-bars usually present are fired on the edges, aces of clear sky between them are greenish-yellow :#^ffl&fefeta ; '- il%ti§i$JM on outleci astern \ uring the ■ [!^J! . . Twilight deepened round us. Still and black The great woods climbed the mountain at our- back. — John G. Whittier : Mountain Pictures. 76 The night has a thousand eyes, And the day but one; Yet the light of the bright world dies, With the dying sun! — F. W. Bourdillon : Light. The evening time had come — the golden lettered hour — the miracle of departing day. Spell-charms were already weaving. The azure deeps were becoming deli- cately colored and the blue intensities of the day growing pale with the pallor of silver and of primrose. The air was softly lucent and the sky a velvet plain, rehued by myriads of invisible brushes. Dream-footed shadows, softened by hints of amber and tints of bronze, were appearing; the mauve of the hills deepened into purple and to pink. There were touches of lavender and gleams of rose, of pearl and of copper; fingers of opalescent light; flushes of crimson; flashes of ultra- marine; and far-stretched, high-flung bands of royal red; trebles of color mating with trebles of color; and delicate intimate cloud films, lustered with loosened turquoise shaken into the air. The distant, sun-illumined vistas of the hills were dark- ening into dusk. The tapestried horizon and the sky's empurpled hem were one. Above them a world of enskied glory reached and spread its pearl-tinctured panels, set with amethystine altars, inlaid with alabaster, fused with hyacinths and garnets, and draped with chrisophrase ; tipping the clouds with flame; filling the higher regions with an opaline radiance, mingled with all the greens and gold that ever were, with bits of vague, resplendent blue between, blending the red of the ruby with the yellow of But beauty seen is never lost, God's colors all are fast; The glory of his sunset heaven Into my soul is passed. -John G. Whittier : Sunset on the Bearcamp. [77] Airy turrets purple piled. — Ralph Waldo Emerson : May-day. A wonderful glory of color, A splendor of shifting light. — Margaret Sangster : A Winter Sunset. the topaz, and culminating in a brilliant "sun-flashed path of gold". The pillared mountains were bathed in romantic light, entrenched in beauty. Their trails were celestial ways; their passes, glory-guarded; and their rampired walls, visions of castled grandeur; every cliff and crag and ice- capped, star-loved peak, a minaret of Alpine fire. But the crux and crisis of the wonder-working drama was in the West. There the final scene was being staged in a frenzy of emulation, with a magnificence of investi- ture and a pomp and grandeur of pageantry unparalleled ; with side-lights undreamable and an imagery untrans- latable and unknowable. The Sovereign of the Solar Universe approached his death-couch, regal and imperial as when he held himself the Lord of Light and Power. He appeared a colossal passion flower, from which flowed and blended every shade and tint of color Nature ever knew, radiating from his flame-lit chalice quivering shafts of fire, trembling sweeps of scarlet, pools of purple-veined glory, and palpi- tating seas of umber encompassing islands of crimson and of gold. Emanating from him and streaming through a peri- phery of cloud, a profundity of enraptured radiance spilled and poured itself into the bosom of the aerial, tideless sea in which he was emersed, softening at length Touched by a light that hath no name, A glory never sung, Aloft on sky and mountain wall Are God's great pictures hung. — John G. Whittier : Sunset on the Bearcamp. 78 Ight. mer : A Winter Sun ng in a brilliant "sun-flashed ;old Thi. ins were bathed in romantic light, ity. Their trails were celestial ways; the .ry-guarded; and their rampired walls, d grandeur; every cliff and crag and ice- ed peak, a minaret of Alpine fire. le crux and crisis of the wonder-working drama te West. There the final scene was being staged y of emulation, with a magnificence of investi- r id a pomp and grandeur of pageantry unparalleled ; ide-lights undreamable and an imagery untrans- ■■*^si*pi8«0«Afi^ b ™ y v T* b ^ m I he bovereig. ith-couch, the Lord of Lig sion flow, de and tint c flame-lit cha s of see. I palpi- seas of umber encompassing islands of cr ind Id. Emanating from him and streaming through a peri- phery of cloud, a profundity of enraptured radiance spilled and poured itself into the bosom of the aer tideless sea in which he was emersed Touched by a light that ha A glory never sung, Aloft on sky and mc A great pict Whittier Purple peaks that edge the night Crowned with ineffable, far fadeless light. -Anna Catharine Markham : A Sierra Memory. The flora of the mystic mine-world Around me lifts on crystal stems The petals of its clustered gems! — John G. Whittier : The Pageant. into patches of caressing light and melting in the dim distance into lakes of lingering calm and gulfs of blissful peace, held between banks of rubied gold and lulled by- hills of topple-down. Around and about him, half veiling him with their glory-crevassed draperies hung groups of intimate, coax- ing clouds, laced with silver, edged with scarlet and looped with rainbows, radiant even in their hour of mourning, illumined by the parting glories of the dying, trans- figured monarch. The scene was big with grandeur, impressed with the symbol and the fact of majesty — a vision of mingled beauty and sublimity. The obsequies were imperial, becoming the funeral rites of an emperor of worlds, of planets, of stars and of constellations, and of systems vast and illimitable in extent and wealth as space and time could hold. Airy messengers clad in uniforms of resplendent light and bearing banners of rose and of crimson, and pennants of red and of gold, mounted on invisible steeds swifter and fleeter than thought, bore dispatches to the four corners of the heavens, and the bannered armies of the sky in- stantly responded. Their movements were hurried and instantaneous, but orderly and noiseless as Time itself. No dispatch miscarried or failed of delivery. No summons was misunderstood or unresponded to. There was neither / fancy all shapes are there; Temple, mountain, monument, spire; Ships rigged out with sails of fire, And blown by the evening air. — J. K. Hoyt : A Summer Sunset. [81] While round his couch's golden rim The gaudy clouds, like courtiers, crept — Struggling each other's light to dim, And catch his last smile e'er he slept. — Thomas Moore : The Summer Fete. disorder nor confusion. Pallbearers of radiant, dazzling effulgence silently took their places about the cloud- draped casket. Funeral guards, gigantic in proportion and gorgeous in apparel, swiftly encircled them. Orchestras with instru- ments tuned to cords ineffable filled the sky with music beyond the reach or grasp of finite ear or sense. After these came countless squadrons of bright-robed, white- maned, cloud-cavalry, followed by innumerable corps of wonder-clad mist-soldiers, and these by seried columns of twilight infantry, rank upon rank. On their flanks troops of gold-and-jeweled-crossed videttes signalled their grief and courtesied their farewells. In the offings the assembled navies of the aerial world dropped their flags to half-mast and set the insignias of sorrow, wine-red and purple-blended, streaming from every spar and flag-wrapped turret. The stalwart hills, stirred by the wondrous pageant and melted by regret and grief, waved adieus, and the haughty mountains bowed their snow-crowned heads in sorrow. Slowly the imperial, martial procession passed. The glittering pageantry dissolved. The gleaming banners vanished, and the marching armies disappeared, leaving in their illumined pathway chariots of trailing clouds and the strange and changing forms and phantoms of twi- light's mysterious hour. The air is full of hints of grief, Strange voices touched with pain. -Thomas Bailey Aldrich : Landscape Twilight. [82] 'Changing Forms and Phantoms". [83 1 / have oftentimes Felt in the midnight silence of my soul The call of God. — Robert Southey : Joan of Arc. 84 The breeding place of immortality: Young angels here might lay a soothing hand On space made infinite and grieved time Become eternal. — Anna Hempstead Branch : Nimrod. Beyond the crags and peaks of the Siskiyous and of the Coast Range, somewhere in the realms of vast and distant space, they buried the Regal Ruler whose demise and obsequies we had witnessed, in a grave of mist and cloud, with celestial ado and parade, and amid heavenly pomp and splendor — buried him as they had buried him at the evening-tide of every day since Omnipotence proclaimed him Lord of Earth and Star and Universe, and as they will continue to bury him at the evening-tide of every day until the earth and stars shall dissolve and the universe be rolled as a scroll and time and evening-tide shall be no more! And from now until then, through untold ages, men shall journey there, even as we had journeyed, and behold with reverential awe the miracle of his daily death and the imperial pageantry of his obsequies. Turning toward the east, I beheld the countless hosts of the forests hushed and tranquil, towering one above another on the slopes of the hills like a devout audience. The setting sun filled them with amber light, and seemed to say, while they listened, "My peace I give unto you". — John Muir : The Mountains of California. [85 1 What unseen altar crowns the hills That reach up stair on stair? What eyes look through, what white wings fan These purple veils of air? What Presence from the heavenly heights To those of earth stoops down? — John G. Whittier : Sunset on the Bearcamp. 86] jsii3B srljv'lfe'ff xib balliqe aonsibei baiu:) U eyes look th, .'eae.^abbij 77i£ -«''• — J ' [^8] mm Come watch with me the shaft of fire that glows In yonder West: The fair, frail palaces, The fading Alps and archipelagoes, And great cloud-continents of sunset-seas. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich : Miracles. TWILIGHT Jewels that welter like great fallen suns! The living heat that smolders in deep rubies, The endless April of cool emeralds And chrysophrase within whose heart the sky Kisses the sea! The sullen mystery Of opals holding captive sunsets past! And diamonds fashioned from the frozen souls Of lilies once alive. — Ridgeley Torrence : El Dorado. [90] [hat welter like great fallen suns! -^,,* a uhe living neat that smolders in deep ruble*, , _„ afe itoitf flfeflfWft&f^ftf'h oo to enoieiilaM rbiw bciiraffisftrjwr marwft nisinuqj^{.£ >noo;)23l .anidmuloo aiswoft 0jih ,, babnehBg .sniqul No eye to watch, and no tongue to wound us, All earth forgot, and all heaven around us. — Thomas Moore : Come O'er the Sea. 92 Hydras of emerald and blue Were part of swaying tapestries. Whose woof from ivies of the seas Stole each inquietude of hue. — George Sterling : The House of Orchids, With the burial of the Sovereign of Time and Light there came a soul-enchanting change. In the West the world was shut with a golden bar ; its portals, closed with portieres of clouds; its altars, set about with filigrees of gold and veiled with curtains of rose and of pearl, fibered with shades of orange and intermingled with yellow, red and brown. In the zenith twin beams, delicate and fragile, met and kissed and embraced and dissolved, consumed by the rapture of their own passion. Here and there a few lights still lingered, "dim, hovering on the skirts of space". The brilliancies changed to palors touching sky and cloud with soft and tender hues. The splendors melted into dissolving, expiring fires; the ebbing rays, into chastened afterglows, clinging with trembling, atten- uated tendrils to vanishing coronals of air. About the fir-purpled slopes gathered omens of oblivion. The hills were sepulchers of dying splendors. The moun- tain-peaks, late wrapped in rose and pink, and hued with crimson, were shadow-edged, compassed by mystery and solitude, and haunted with strange, vague forms. The twilight slowly robbed the clouds of glory. The sky be- came a bloomy purple, broken here and there with patches of blended peace and flame, darkening near the horizon into a velvety pall. Other preludes of the night were not wanting. And yet there hung over and about every- thing — mountain, sky and cloud— a fine serenity, a tran- quilizing glory, like the benignity of Omniscience. There was a holy hush. The forest's hymn was staid. Everything seems to settle in conscious repose. The winds breathe gently or are wholly at rest. The few clouds visible are downy and luminous and combed out fine on the edges. John Muir : Travels in Alaska. [93 1 We are back in the youth and wonder of the world. Here is silence. Here is peace. — Edwin Markham : California the Wonderful. The light, subdued and soft. A serene and utter peace had fallen — a silence touched with^ tenderness — unbroken save by bird-call and water-fall, and they, half-hushed and prayerful. The very atmosphere was hallowed; the winds, quieting. A fragment of God's changeless calm enveloped all — the pause that comes between the day and night, an hour of equal kin to both; a segment filled with mystery-spells and hints of wondrous, unguessed things ; a moment of worship and of adoration, of worship deep and sweet as silence, of adoration profound and reverent as unsaid prayer — when silence speaks to silence, and the heart of things and of men beats in rhythm with the heart of the Infinite — the one sweet moment in which man is pure enough to be God's medium and in which it is easy to be clean of soul; a cup filled with peace and inspiration, pressed in mercy to man's dry lips. We stood bedreamed, yet acutely conscious, our souls answering to the vibrations of the hour and scene as from a touch divine. But an hour like that could not abide. The day was already done. The night was come. Its falling shadows broke the spell. We had lived a glorious, soul-filled day. Throughout its every hour Nature's wondrous voices had held for us "a varied language", and we had heard and almost understood. Depth, heighth, space, color, mystery and calm had wrought in us their will. How still it is! Dear God, I hardly dare To breathe. — Henry van Dyke : Daybreak in the Grand Canyon of Arizona. [94] This radiant pomp of sun and star, Thrones that were, and worlds that are. — Ralph Waldo Emerson : Woodnotes. 95 ,'rabnc rnrfl -a / live not in myself, but I become Portion of that around me; and to me High mountains are a feeling. — Lord Byron : Childe Harold. 98 NIGHT The sweet dusk deepens and majestic night — Mother of dreams and sleep — sinks silently Upon the land; the tide steals in, and where The ripples dance I watch the red stars write In fiery lines Gods message to the sea. — Herbert Bashford ; Sunset. [100] The sweet dusk deepens and majestic nigh Mother of dreams and sleep — sirt .'TrSiil^b^toSrtteB brie; anie- P wo gnuwz- [101] How like a queen comes forth the lonely moon Walking in beauty to her midnight throne! — George Croly : Diana. [ 102 The moon that night looked down in full-orbed splendor paving the turf with inlaid ebony and silver, and laying a mantle of white velvet on the tents in which we were to sleep. — John L. Stoddard : The Grand Canyon of Arizona. Before the twilight could deepen into night, the moon — changeful nurseling of our little, space-flung world — swung out of the eastern mountains and assumed do- minion. We made a bed beneath the pines, of fir and hemlock boughs, and stretched ourselves to rest and dreams. Immediately about and surrounding us the gloom inten- sified until it became obscure, preternatural and mys- terious, filled with whimsical, fantastic forms and peopled with ludicrous, misshapen, distorted apparitions. But outside our immediate environment beyond the trees the light fell, soft and meditative, and along the forest's edge phantom shadows and quivering moonbeams met and mingled, danced hand in hand, and leaped and romped together. In the ravines below, the congregating waters, fresh from the melted snows above, whispered intermittent and broken confidences of expectant, far-away journey- ings by brook and creek and river and sea and cloud, ere they returned to wrap again in virgin white the bosom of the mountains that long had held them; and in the dis- tance the moon-dimmed cliffs, like ghostly sentinels, kept silent ward and calm but wakeful vigil. We made our beds beneath a grand old Sitka spruce five feet in diameter, whose broad, wing-like branches were outspread immediately above our heads. The night picture as I stood back to see it in the fire- light was this one great tree, relieved against the gloom of the woods back of it, the light on the low branches revealing the shining needles, the brown, sturdy trunk grasping an outswelling mossy bank, and a fringe of illuminated bushes within a few feet of the tree with the fire- light on the tips of the sprays. — John Muir : Travels in Alaska. [ 103] The scraggy pines anchored in the rocky fissures were so dwarfed and shorn by storm-winds that you might walk over their tops. — John Muir : The Mountains of California. Lulled by the scent of broken fir and hemlock, the sigh of the pines and the tongueless tattle of journeying waters, we fell asleep, and slept until the moon had climbed and passed the zenith of its course and hung midway in the upper arc of the western sky. Then we awoke, arose and girded ourselves, and begun the final ascent of the moun- tain. Our goal was the crest of its loftiest pinnacle, that we might from thence behold the miracle of the making of a morning and see the glory of a Siskiyou sunrise. At times the way was shadowy and indistinct, and the ascent so steep that the exertion of climbing took our breath; our trembling knees refused our weight and we fell and lay prone upon the mountainside until breath and strength returned ; then we clambered on. At other times we walked almost erect, up easy ascents and over comparatively level stretches, picking our way among rocks and boulders and between gnarled and stunted firs, crooked and bent by mountain winds and the weight of winter snows. My companion, younger and lither of form, and more accustomed to mountain climbing, outran me, and, paus- ing now and then, called down to me from the shadows. In the hushed and noiseless night his voice fell strange and loud and weird. The hills would catch it up and Several large Sugar Pines stood near the thicket in which I was sheltered, bowing solemnly and tossing their long arms as if interpret- ing the very words of the storm, while accepting its wildest onsets with passionate exhilaration. The lions were feeding. — John Muir : The Mountains of California. \ 104 1 o o C cfl C u o Copyright, E. S. Curtis. 105 One of the last outposts of the forest below the line of eternal snow. — John H. Williams : The Mountain That Was God. 106 . . . Fowls in their clay nests were couch' d And now wild beasts come forth, the woods to roam. — John Milton : Paradise Lost. change and multiply it until the whole mountainside and every nook and alcove seemed peopled with gabbling, jibbering entities, invisible and uncanny. Sometimes he would pause and stand far above me on some projecting ledge in a cleared space in the moonlight; his form, silhouetted against the sky, would assume gro- tesque proportions and become magnified and raised in stature until he towered a gigantic Druid, typical of the shimmery, deceptive night and its wild, wierd and mystical environment. After two hours of toil and climb we reached the snow- line, and entered a scene of pallid, ghostly beauty — a realm of witchery and of awe. It was as though we had reached the world's limits and were standing upon the linked, but unfused, edge of time and space. The beauty, the sublimity and the wonder enthralled; immensity com- panioned and encompassed; the illimitable and the un- known environed us. Infinity pressed so close about us that we could have touched it with our awe-white hands. We could hear the whisper of Mystery's muted lips and feel the throb, of Fear's stilled pulse. The call of the All-Great was in the air. Across the night's roofless, far-distant dome, He had written His "I am", and set with His own sure hands amid the firma- ment's soundless solitudes His signature forever. This was that earth of which we have heard, made out of chaos and old night. — Henry David Thoreau : The Maine Woods. f 107 1 The wind breathed soft as lovers sigh, And oft renew d, seem'd oft to die, With breathless pause between. — Sir Walter Scott : Lord of the Isles. Before and amid it all, we stood in utter nakedness of soul, feeling the surge of inspiration, vast and inchoate, "Yearning to reach t4ie cosmic wires . That flash Infinity's desires." Language cannot describe, it can only suggest, what we beheld or what we felt — its witchery or its awe : A white, up-stretched waste of incrusted, scintillating snow, interspersed with the dark, deep green of fir trees, immeshed and half-submerged, now motionless, now stirred with "the borrowed breath of vagrant winds"; The pensive, diffused moonlight; The dim and distant forest line's alternating tremor of light and shade — wavery and uncertain; The shadowy, imaginary configurations of cliff and crag and peak; Unnatural, half-formed shapes in ravines and valleys, wombed in blackness ; The shrouded, indeterminate mountains; The haunting silence and the profound calm, absolute and impenetrable; The bended, concaved heavens — world-sown, star-set — filled with sparkling fixities and zoned by dread immen- sities ; The canopied firmament — an unwalled temple, vast and roofless, diamond-strung and sapphire-crowned, lumi- nous with suns and flame-set spheres — burning crucibles of energy and heat; The glorious hosts of light Walk the dark hemisphere . . , All through her silent watches, gliding slow, Her constellations come, and climb the heavens and go. — William Cullen Bryant : Hymn to the North Star. [108] - rrid oft to ■use between. er Scott : Lord of the Isles. 11, we stood in utter nakedness of of inspiration, vast and incho ig to reach ths-jx>smic wires . h Infinity's desires." mot describe, it can only suggest, what what we felt — its witchery or its awe : .sp-stretched waste of incrusted, scintillating rspersed with the dark, deep green of fir trees, and half-submerged, now motionless, now with "the borrowed breath of vagrant winds"; le pensive, diffused moonlight; The dim and distant forest line's alternating tremor of 2 ■■g«bett8fitez-,'i- .ia^3$^n§sH&b-,;)2-qu .ajinV A" briBH©rffefflakjtv,«g3iiria%3oaffl55Tg:-qs3b fMk B8tofi;Jllifiban§q£E8gi ^bs^qjg^ prii' rbiw banicte won .ezalnoborn won t b3§i3mdu2-ilBrI Unnatural, rv .-.aw jnsiasy wombed in bl The shrouded, ; The. haunting and imp The be. et — filled with spark; nmen- sities ; The cano; an unwalled temple, vast jfless, diamond-strung and sapphire-crowned, lumi- vith suns and flame-set spheres — burning crucibl ind heat; me, and LEI 901} - M For the white glory overawes me; The crystal terror of the seer Of Chebar s vision blinds me here. — John G. Whittier : The Pageant. 10 Night .... follows . . with her diadem of stars, bright creatures! How they gleam like spirits through the shadows of innumerable eyes from their thrones in the boundless depths of heaven. — Thomas Carlisle : Letter to Jane Welsh. The Milky Way, stooping down from out the zenith — a great livid stream in the infinite — with its thousand million suns creeping in dim procession like white-robed specters in a way of dreams, or parading in ostentatious show, "a jostling crowd in radiant disarray" ; The stupendous drama of the unscrolled sky : Its vast and star-lit stage framed in eternal arches, set with star-encircled suns and trembling irre- solvable nebulae, with unutterable splendor of scenery, stretching afar, down dim and distant aisles of light — Its radiant rarities — Its trembling, bright amazements — Its pomp and pageantry — Its processions and its marches — Its gigantic movements — Its troop of actors — stars, treble and quadruple, com- posed of revolving suns, gowned in green and red and yellow robes — flaming constellations— globes of living fire, in effulgent garb — veiled and silent sisters, ' nebulae-ringed and spiral-crowned — pallid specters and mysterious apparitions — lordly, con- quering suns, holding in their train chained and captive worlds, with retinues of humble, worship- Satellites circle round their primaries, planets wheel in obedience to the behest of their parent suns, comets under the same potent spell wing their fiery flight through space. The sun himself, upon whose majestic court hundreds of bright attendants wait, is subjected in turn to the influence of his mighty brethren, and rolls at their bidding along his appointed course. — Kalley Miller : The Romance of Astronomy. _ This world was once a fluid haze of light, Till towards the centre set the starry tides, And eddied into suns, that wheeling cast The planets. — Alfred Tennyson : The Princess. ping satellites — choruses of singing spheres — im- pulsive, lawless meteors and knights-errant comets wrapped in clouds of cosmic fire — Its succession of primordial, vital acts — Its fantasies — Its bombastes furiosoes — Its extravangazas — Its phantasmagorias — Its crysmal harmonies and inaudible celestial mel- odies — Its mad dances of incalculable forces — Its emotional paeans — Its dirges and its jubilates — Its undressed sincerity — Its convulsing, consuming passions — Its abysmal loves — Its cataclysmic tragedies with their pangs and agonies, and the birth and death of worlds — Its suns in accouchment; The terror and the dreadfulness of stellar space : Its leagues of emptiness — Its colossal areas — Its impalpable reaches — Its unbridgeable immensities — A hoary deep, a dark Illimitable ocean, without bound, Without dimensions, where length, breadth, and height, And time, and place, are lost; where eldest Night And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold Eternal anarchy, amidst the noise Of endless wars, and by confusion stand. — John Milton : Paradise Lost. I H2] I The Pr>. —choruses of singing spheres — ii •.vless meteors and knights-errant comets clouds of cosmic fire — on of primordial, vital acts — s — wastes furiosoe.^ . rtravangazas — [ts phantasmagorias — [ts crysmal harmonies and inaudible celestial mel- odies — [ts mad dances of incalculable forces — [ts emotional paeans — Its dirges and its jubilates [tsundress. .™I akfc^bhdnU" [ts con\ : : . : mpalpal [ts unbridgeable immensities — A hoary deep, a dark .itable ocean, without bound, \out dimensions, where length, brc And time, and place, are lost; where And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, h xal anarchy, amidst the r. ■ars, and by [HI] We are above the empty babble of the world — uplifted into the great silence. Before us is an illimitable expanse of wonder that reaches to the horizon, an expanse that ends — yet ends not. The crags and peaks and pinnacles recede and dissolve till at last the sky receives them as one substance with itself — gray into gray, shadow into shadow. Let us be reverent and still on the lofty summit: Here is a place where the soul may touch the passion of the infinite. — Edwin Markham : California the Wonderful. 14] Vast assemblages of stars streaming far into space. Nor are these star-clusters the greatest marvels of the Milky Way. It is dotted with white spots. . . . vast oceans of flaming gas . . . . hanging all together isolated in space, while they spread their huge billows over countless millions of miles. — Kalley Miller : The Romance of Astronomy. Its incomprehensible voids — vast and unknowable — Its infinity and its illimitability — Its awful scope — Its dread import — Its stupendous, impossible depths — Its shoreless, starless seas — Its soundless solitudes — Its precipices of astonishment and of fright — Its gateless gardens — Its unbarred doors of wonder — Its swing of worlds and whirl of planets and march of endless systems — Its cloistered fires and dimmed and burned-out stars — Its tragedies of dissolving worlds — Its eclipse of suns — Its infinitude of august and sacred horrors. Everywhere, everywhere, in the zenith, at the nadir, in front, behind, above, below, in the heights, in the depths, looms the formidable dark- ness of the Infinite. The ensemble of all this passes the bounds of chimera and is over- whelming in its reality. A madman could not have dreamed it, a genius could not have imagined it. All this is a unity. And I am part of it. — Victor Hugo : Things of the Infinite. [115] Face to face with the infinitude of God, — alone where mortal footstep has never trod, where presence there has never been, save that of the ever omnipresent Creator and the spirits which pass and repass, ascending and descending the ladder of vision which bridges the chasm between heaven and earth, as they go and come, ministering to the heirs of salvation. — Kalley Miller : The Romance of Astronomy. Standing there amid the night, the snow-mantled silence and the dream-dim solitudes — the charm and witchery, the amazement and the wonder, the mystery and the awe of it all — "The spheres beneath His fingers circling free", we felt and knew what Wordsworth felt and knew when he wrote this great acknowledgment : " * * I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man : A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things". The apparitions of the universe will continue to loom. The unsoundable will remain before you in its entirety. Beyond the visible the invisible, beyond the invisible, the unknown. — Victor Hugo : Things of the Infinite. Earth, turning from the sun, brings night to man; Man, turning from his God brings endless night. — Edward Young : Night Thoughts. \ 1161 I footstep has never bee 4 the ever as, ascending hich bridges the chasm between inistering to the heirs of The Romance of Astronomy. amid the night, the snow-mantled the dream-dim solitudes — the charm and the amazement and the wonder, the mystery /e of it all — "The spheres beneath His fingers circling free", it and knew what. Wordsworth felt and knew when rote this great acknowledgment : .'ViH IshtesbO rbiW bsqqiT ^Bs^bsaariiH e'bnfilrfaA jM" A presence Ot Of SOf. Wh An- Anci The apparitions of the universe will continue to lot indable will remain before you in its the visible the invisible, beyond the — Victor Hugo : Thu rom the sun. brings night irning from his God brings endle — Edward Yoi The atmosphere itself became one mass of color — a fine translucent purple haze, in which the islands with softened outlines seemed to float, while a dense red ring lay around the base of each of them as a fitting border. — John Muir : Travels in Alaska. 118 BEFORE THE DAWN The Morning-stars are dumb With trembling bright amazement; and the Dawn Steals through the glimmering pines with naked feet, Her hand upon her lips, to look on thee. Turn to the East, and show upon thy breast The mightiest marvel in the realm of Time! — Henry van Dyke : Daybreak in the Grand Canyon of Arizona. [ 120 rning-stan are dumb- ■ h trembling bright amazement; and the Dawn Steals through the glimmering pines with naked feet, Her hand upon her lips, to look on thee. ."jimrnuS.sfto lo.eslosnai^.bns z\Yi\D sriT" Turn to the md she The mightiest ma [I«] Below were three horizontal belts of purple edged with gold, while a vividly defined, spreading fan of flame streamed up- ward across the purple bars and faded in a feathery edge of dull red. -John Muir : Travels in Alaska. 122 Sit here on the basalt ranges Where twisted hills betray The seat of the world-old forces Who wrestled here one day. — Ralph Waldo Emerson : May Morning. Another short but clambering climb and we stood among the cliffs and pinnacles of the summit. We were none too soon, for the moon, even as we attained them, was surrendering to the night. Its empery was over. Its sovereignty, gone. The far-away peaks of the distant Coast Range, were reaching their arms, impatient to give it sepulcher. For a moment it hung above them, a molten, suspended disc, reluctant, but regal; then suddenly dropped into their bosom — gone in an instant as if fallen into a grave. Its light paled and waned, faded and dis- solved, absorbed by the deepening shadows, eaten by the blackness of the night. Things grew strange and indistinct. The crags be- came apparitions. The mountains disappeared. The ranges were lost in oblivion; wrapped in the darkness and solitude of an isolation deep and weird; enveloped in a silence absolute and profound, vast and abysmal. There was no sound ; no cry of bird ; or murmur of insect ; no sigh of pine or fir. The wind itself was motionless, its breath hushed in lonesomeness, stayed by dread. The darkness chilled. The isolation oppressed. The silence hurt. But only for a moment. The miracle of morning was at hand. We were entangled only in the remnant of the night. And suddenly the moon withdraws And to her sombre cavern flies, Wrapped in a veil of yellow gauze. — Oscar Wilde : La Fruite de la Luna. 123 Giant forms molded themselves from darkness into light. — John L. Stoddard : Switzerland. Its triumph, though black and intense, was brief. It could not hold the citadels it had captured. The soldiers of the dawn were already marshaling and soon would be marching to the rescue. As yet they could neither be seen nor heard. But there was a prescience in the air, a telepathy that our souls could not misinterpret. The news, though impalpable and intangible, was too good to be suppressed. The birds sensed it and told the secret to one another in subdued chirps and confidential twit- terings. The wind, overhearing, caught again its sus- pended breath, whispered the message among the cliffs and bade the sullen, somber crags be glad. In the East dim, timorous premonitions were appearing. At first, only virginal cognitions — beginnings, ethereal and evanescent; intimations, tremulous and elusive, and half-formed timidities; then, faint vibrations,, silvery threads of gossamere, and trembling thistle-downs of shell- white light; then, hints of glimmering colors; pris- matic flashes, harmonic salutations, changing from white to gold and from gold to crimson; then, roseate chameleon hues, lustrous coils of crystal air, and rings of vari-colored filaments shot through with fire; quivering, leaping tongues of yellow, red and green, streaking the retreating gloom with glow, transmuting darkness into pearl, hang- The gray-ey'd morn smiles on the frowning night, Chequering the eastern clouds with streaks of light. — William Shakespeare : Romeo and Juliet. [124] ght. Stoddard : Switzerland. ck and intense, was brief. It le citadels it had captured. The soldiers ere already marshaling and soon would be Lhe rescue. As yet they could neither be d. But there was a pre in the air, a that our souls could not misinterpi "he new .igh impalpable and intangible, was too good to be suppressed. The birds sensed it and told the secret another in subdued chirps and confidential twit- terings. The wind, overhearing, caught again its sus- ^jb^arfnia^yiesfffifil £fyh/ In the East di . mg. At firs and ev threads of % of !l-whit is- matic ' lite to;. .-n;the hameleon es, lustrous coi nd rings of vari-colored filaments shot through with fire; quivering, leaping tongues of yellow, red and green, streaking the retreating gloom with glow, transmuting darkness into pearl, hang- [AM IAKESP1 diet. m i And morning, faintly touched with, quivering fire, Leans on the summits of the hills. — William Roscoe : Poems and Essays. 126 Now a dream of a flame through that dream of a flush is up rolled; To the zenith ascending, a dome of undazzling gold Is builded — Sidney Lanier : Sunrise. ing the lintels of the dawn with entwined chains of jewels, tingeing the cloud-work of the sky with blaze of opal and flame of ruby, sending wind-whipped couriers of light to the zenith's battalious heighths, waking the wonder-chil- dren of the heavens. But these glyptic glories, bewitching and resplendent as they were, were but the frontier-lights of grander effulgencies — trial-fires, kindled on the untrodden brink of the morn's impending edge. The day's returning empire was not yet come. Its Lord was still invisible, but preparations were making. The curtains of the night were parted. The sky was close-writ with prophecy. The coronal robes were weaving. The altar candles were lighting. The throne-room was being made ready. But the palace gates were not yet open. Across them still were bolts and rods and bars — bolts of burnished steel, rods of ham- mered brass and bars of turquoise and of gold — keeping the imprisoned glories back, staying the virgin-footed, silent-sandaled morning until the King should come. There was, however, no delay. For no sovereign ever measured time with the accuracy of this one. In all his train there was no laggard. Every moment his coming became more imminent; the preparations, more decisive. The golden glimmers waxed into rose-crowned splendors. Miles of enameled pink and gold Incrust the blue of space, While bands of amethyst enfold Each mountain's massive base. — John L. Stoddard : Sunrise in the Selkirks. 127 Hues of the rich unfolding morn, That, ere the glorious sun be born, By some soft touch invisible Around his path are taught to swell. — John Keble : The Christian Year. The belts of color deepened. The crystal waves became scarlet. The peaks and cliffs grew crimson. We stood, perched among the crags, expectant; quiv- ering with anticipation. Suddenly there came a change, significant and instant as an electric touch. The rapture became visible. We felt the thrill and wonderment of a scene beyond the imagery of the senses. The East was one great altar, fused into molten unity. The sky, a vast elysium of visual ecstasy. The heavens, a panorama of pictured pomp and prodigality — one grand crescendo of form and color, breaking into gushes of excesses, oriflammes of rapture, apogees of exultation, tumults of alleluiahs, and repercussions of delight. Then, in the midst of it all, in a single, luminous instant, happened the supreme miracle — the thing we had climbed the mountain to look upon. The gates of dawn were burst asunder, breaking the bolts and bars that held them, into bits of amethyst and fragmentary prisms, and through their shattered, jasper portals leaped the Sun — the resur- rected King — followed by jubilees of glorias ; outbursts of sublimity, set with the imprint of divinity, enameling everything with a bewildering, bewitching beauty — heaven-begotten, mountain-born — tipping the ethered The music trembled with an inward thrill Of bliss at its own grandeur: wave on wave Its flood of mellow thunder rose, until The hushed air shivered with the throb it gave, Then poising for a moment it stood still, And sank and rose again, to burst in spray That wandered into silence far away. — James Russell Lowell : A Legend of Brittany. 128 I swell. 3LE : The Q Year. deepened. The^- crystal waves became and cliffs grew crimson. imong the crags, expectant; quiv- on. Suddenly there came a change, unt as an electric touch. The rapture We felt the thrill and wonderment of a »e imagery of the senses. The East was used into molten unity. The sky, a vast sual ecstasy. The heavens, a panorama of rap and prodigality — one grand crescendo of olor, breaking into gushes of excesses, oriflammes ipogees of exultation, tumults of alleluiahs, sssions of delight. led the su^bnuog boe ^70*4 to e-abnoWv. - climbed mountair 1 were isunder, em, intobk ir shattered, ■ rsts of sublimity. ,ng everything with a bewil' beauty — : heaven-begotten, rhered music t, an inward thrill '. its oivn grandeur: wave on ■ Its flood of mellow thunder re ed with the t. r a moment it d sank and rose again, to burst in spray ndered into silence far a IWI] A gust of wind disputes the water s way, hurling, tossing, shattering and strewing the splendor in meteoric streams, ruined nebulae, bursting constellations. — Edwin Markham : California the Wonderful. 130] Behold the kingly day now leaps The eastern wall of earth with sword in hand, Clad in flowing robe of mellow light, Like to a king that has regain d his throne. — Joaquin Miller : Ina. Morn Wak'd by the circling hours, with rosy hand Unbarred the gates of light. — John Milton : Paradise Lost. peaks of Crater Lake — Diamond, Union, Scott and Thielson — with celestial fire, adorning Wagner and Mc- Loughlin with air-swung aquarelles, filling and over-run- ning sensation's high-raised brim. We could not restrain ourselves. We cried aloud and shouted in an ecstasy of delight. We were in the realiza- tion of an emancipated, exalted moment, and felt again the joy of childhood's hour, the ecstasy we knew before our lives had held a wrong. And yet, notwithstanding our elated mood and the soul-squandering scene that produced it, there were within us deeper soundings of emotion than we then were con- scious of — soul-deeps of which we did not know. But knowledge of them was now to be ours. They were about to be touched and awakened as by a call from the Infinite. We had but to turn to the right and the wonder-spell was upon us. 'Tis done, — the morning miracle of light, — The resurrection of the world of hues That die with dark, and daily rise again With every rising of the splendid Sun! — Henry Van Dyke : Daybreak in the Grand Canyon of Arizona. The great world's altar-stairs, That slope thro' darkness up to God. — Alfred Tennyson : In Memoriam. 131 ] And all between is cleft And carved into a hundred curving miles Of unimagined architecture! Tombs, Temples, and colonnades are neighbored there By fortresses that Titans might defend, And amphitheaters where Gods might strive. Cathedrals, buttressed with unnumbered tiers Of ruddy rock, lift to the sapphire sky A single spire of marble pure as snow; And huge aerial palaces arise Like mountains built of unconsuming flame. Along the weathered walls, or standing far In riven valleys where no foot may tread, Are lonely pillars, and tall monuments Of perished aeons and forgotten things. Henry van Dyke : Daybreak in the Grand Canyon of Arizona. 132 2 hundred curving mag ined architecture! 1 jnnades are neigh 'esses that Titans might i amphitheaters where Gods might sir rats, buttressed with unnumbered tiers Of ruddy rock, lift to the sapphire sky A si And huy Like mountaii Along the w "and Domes and towers and stupendous walls. Bastions sublime, cliffs inaccessible. — Geo. Sterling : Yosemite. [ 134 SUNRISE Be still, my heart! Now Nature holds her breath To see the vital flood of radiance leap Across the chasm; and crest the farthest rim Of alabaster with a glistening white Rampart of pearl; and flowing down by walls Of changeful opal, deepen into gold Of topaz, rosy gold of tourmaline, Crimson of garnet, green and gray of jade, Purple of amethyst, and ruby red, Beryl, and sard, and royal porphyry; Until the cataract of color breaks. — Henry van Dyke : Daybreak in the Grand Canyon of Arizona. 136 II, my heart! Now Nature holds her breath To see the vital flood of radiance leap Across the chasm; and crest the farthest rim Of alabaster with a glistening white Of topaz, rosy gold of tourmalv. ^ ? - 3r ^ Crimson of go p. ■ ■and ona. \U ] I From the mingled strength of shade and light A new creation rises to my sight Such heavenly figures from his pencil flow, So warm with light his blended colors glow. — Lord Byron : Monody on the Death of Sheridan. 138] The white, rayless light of morning, seen when I was alone amid the peaks of the California Sierra, had always seemed to me the most telling of all the terrestrial manifestations of God. — John Muir : Travels in Alaska. There, seventy miles away, towered Shasta, granite- founded, glacier-ploughed, summit-lifted — cloud wrapped, mist-mantled, snow-crested Shasta — shouldering out the sky; gleaming above the clouds in primal grandeur; an island in a sapphire sea ; a far-flung, space-throned wonder, panoplied in glory. For a moment it seemed a sculptured vision; an Hima- laya of the air; a luminous, majestic fantasy; an appari- tion woven of the morning's purple bloom and changing tides ; — then, a living entity, palpable and real ; a creature vast and superlative; a goddess of the sky, clad in folds of shimmering light, veiled in filmy, airy nothings, attended by troupes of courtesying, dancing phantoms whimsical as dreams. An instant later, breaking through the thinned and tattered lilac films, it stood exposed in natal nakedness, disrobed of shadows, limned in the crystal air, clear-cut and vivid ; girth, aflame with crunes of rubies and crumb- ling avalanches of gold; shoulders, scintillant with ame- thysts and with diamonds; breasts, lustrous and irrides- cent with mother-of -pearls and with opals; brow, re- splendent with white-crowned magnificence; presence t regal with the solemnity of isolation, sublime with the sovereignty of silence. The beauty, the grandeur, the sublimity and the pri- malness of the scene entranced us. Our every faculty was The glory of Him who Hung His masonry pendant on naught, when the world He created. — Henry W. Longfellow : The Children of the Lord's Supper. [139] On certain portions of our globe Almighty God has set a special imprint of divinity. — John L. Stoddard : The Grand Canyon of Arizona. enthralled, lost in wonder, hushed in awe. We could not speak, we could not move. Emotion's urn was too full. Our every breath became a prayer. A sense of the vital- ness of the spiritual and of the Divine Essence that lies at the heart of all created things was upon us. The breaths of angels brushed our lips. We could hear their pulsing pinions and feel the ah-ness of their presence. It was like a moment singled out of time. All-forever was in it. Speech, could it have been uttered, would have been a profanation; lip worship, a sacrilege. At the rising of the sun we had cried aloud our exultant admiration. But now the effect was different. Sublimer glories were about us. Heaven's altars, before us. The unplummable depths were touched, and our awed souls stilled into wordless worship. An adoration profound and primal as the thing we looked upon possessed us. It was as though we stood in the workshop of the Almighty — the presence of the Master Workman, near and imminent. Whisperings of Him were about us everywhere — of Him who builds of monads and of worlds; who moulds the sands and fashions suns; who forms the flower, so fragile that a breath will wither; sprinkles space with planets, sows the heavens with stars, and strews the infinitudes with constellations; of Him "who builds, yet makes no chips, no din"; at whose rescript the vast and endless Though Etna crumble and the dark seas rise Sowing the uplands with their sterile brine, Still shall the soul descry with wistful eyes Sicilian headlands bright with flower and fruit; Still shall she hear, though all earth's lips be mute, Sicilian music in the morning skies. — Louis V. Ledoux : A Threnody. f 140 1 / saw the twinkle of white feet, I saw the flash of robes descending. -James Russell Lowell : Hebe. 141 '". ■•■■ ' Iggg^E^* ■* ' '/W '- 1 jf / ■h-,0&**' : ' * - i sfe*' 4 ^" - i ■ tfF 1 . ■ - " - ' '• „ ' v'^.-vS?§^^*^ .5; V"'^-'" " "^- ;r;i "" . fc».: J Jffi5aB^qt'*t* 'B-aJI luf.'y. *^^^ ' »^.X'> V&L^' " " ."'' liJ^rKoJ^I v ^%?'w&ii* ;X*&&- gtt' *' - •* *»<* ■ JKSt,. » V «y ■ * >;, • i^»ft- 1 • "*' - I . ' ■jfl||£i - , ny--*" 4* St • ^ If «•*' "f*>^i »».'**«« ,.rf«W# ■**** .■4T4lC«f i • ■*'&' «• AiTJJMT Like warp and woof all destinies Are woven fast, Linked in sympathy like the keys Of an organ vast. Pluck one thread, and the web ye mar; Break but one Of a thousand keys, and the paining jar Through all will run. — John G. Whittier : My Soul And I . 44 Cold, calm and harmless though they now appear, the time has been when they contained a molten mass which needed but a throb of earth's uneasy heart to light the heavens with an angry glare and cover the adjoining plains with floods of fire. — John L. Stoddard : The Grand Canyon of Arizona. universe moves in order and at whose word its infinites- imal "atoms march in tune". The dawn we looked upon seemed His fresh act; the sky, His recent handiwork; the clouds, new-fashioned by His fingers; the gleaming mountain, a colossal fragment in the architecture of the world, set by His sure hands in the steeps of heaven — a sentinel at the cycle-bolted gates of time and space. Eternity itself was on it; the ineff ability and the irre- vocableness of the Infinite, about it; — on and about it as they were in the chaos-conquered hour, when from the void the Cosmos came with its harmony of worlds and concert of systems. As we contemplated the awe-engirded, soul-soliciting spectacle, the reverence and the homage of the wonder- woven spell deepened and intensified. Below us lay a chaos of fir-and-pine-walled hills, with green-waved, shadowy slopes, from which towered mam- moth trees in forests primeval, the day-break glittering through them. Between the hills, a mixture of light and darkness; deep and narrow valleys filled with a mass of heaving, tumbling, swimming vapors, condensing where the valleys widened, into surging, white-lipped seas of mist. A pine tree standeth lonely On a northern mountain s height. It sleeps, while round it is folded A mantle of snowy white. It is dreaming of a palm tree In a far-off Orient land Which lonely and silently waiteth In the desert's burning sand. — Heinrich Heine : Book of Song. \ 145 1 Glorious landscapes, . . . multitudes of new mountains, . . . towering in glorious array, . . . serene, majestic, snow- laden, sun-drenched, vast domes and ridges ... a glory-day of admission into a realm of wonders. — John Muir : My First Summer in The Sierra. In the distance, the river Bear — vine-fringed, bowlder- bordered — winding in and out through woods and orchards a narrow, silvery ribbon, leaping and laughing on its way to join the troubled waters of the Rogue. Above the hills, but still beneath us, intervening be- tween us and the sky-cleaving peaks of Crater Lake and of Wagoner, Grizzly, McLoughlin and Shasta, rose mo- tionless billows of less lofty mountains, — roll after roll, range on range — some built of centuried granite, massive, formidable and superb ; others with shattered walls, rock- sundered sides, and ragged, wild-piled cliffs, culminating in cataclysmic crags and towers; in pinnacles, storm- riven and lightning-scarred; in turrets, glory-touched; and flame- tipped minarets. Above and about us hung an empire of silence — an aerial, fanciful universe, self-lifted, self-upheld, so close that we, ourselves, seemed involved in its liquid depths, afloat on its waterless seas, immersed in its living splendors — a world of chimeras and of dreams, of illusions and of imagery, a masterpiece of awe. There were fleets of shadowy, half-visible barks; con- voys of argosies and of galleons; seas of crystal, tideless liquid ; islands of jasper and of onyx ; forts, with bastions of emerald and parapets of porphyry, waving banners of Cities lift their phantom walls and towers, touched with eternal colors — aureate, carmine, cerulean. Baalbec and Bagdad and Baby- lon shimmer in phantom beauty on the far horizon. — Edwin Markham : California the Wonderful. [146] r , r rve and al -ilence - td of less h bastions , waving s of Cities lift their phantom rnal carmin iiby- on the far I — Edwin Mars. rful. In Nature's infinite book of secrecy A little I can read. — William Shakespeare : Antony and Cleopatra. 148 Beyond the world of planets there is the world of stars ; beyond the world of stars there is the world of nebulae. — Victor Hugo : Things of the Infinite. capitulation to the wind-woven, flame-winged soldiery of the sun. There were chateaux with gleaming, toppling turrets and windows of molten gold; castles with moats, port- cullises and draw-bridges, wrought of mingled air and cloud. There were temples with jeweled spires and sunlit cloud- towers wrought by ghostly masons; cathedrals of incom- parable and undreamable grandeur, with pillars and columns, domes, and campaniles, aisles, and altars chastely beautiful. There were gorgeous palaces, with facades of tourma- line and colonnades of chrysophrase. There were parliament buildings and high- vaulted throne-rooms, resplendent with priceless tapestries. There were contours of empyrean wonders, strange, illusive things; profiles of ethereal figures; sun-swung gardens filled with trees and bowers and fronded palms; outlines of flying buttresses and cloud-formed, air-piled mountains, with poised, high-raised and pillared shafts. There were broken masses of crimson clouds, with chequered folds, and torn and sundered edges, lighted by mysterious, air-fed fires. There were belts and lunes of brilliants, diadems of turquoise, tiaras of hyacinths, and multi-colored, fire- fretted crowns of glory. Bathed in the tenderest purple of distance, Tinted and shadowed by pencils of air, Thy battlements hang o'er the slopes and the forests, Seats of the Gods in the limitless ether, Looming sublimely aloft and afar. — Bayard Taylor : Kilimandjaro. [149] Opal and jacinth, orb and shell, Calice and filament of jade, And fonts of malachite inlaid With lotus and with asphodel — — Geo. Sterling : The House of Orchids and Other Poems. There were crystal air-borne floes of light; waves of gold and of garnet; drifts of imperial purple; bursts of orange; sun-dropped splendors. There were riots of green, straits of tender, heavenly incommunicable blue, and archipelagoes of velvety violet. There were broken prisms; gleams of beryl and beams of topaz; and threads of widening, lengthening lilac, mingling and melting into softly shaded hues of indigo and of gold. There were pools of splendor, petrified billows of color, cascades of lavender, cataracts of silver and plicatures of rose and of pearl, paling into tranquil, blissful white warmed into graciousness ; and over all a soul-satisfying, transfiguring tenderness, sanctifying as a benediction. The close-rimmed sky, from castellated base-line with its cloud-entangled peaks, to constellated zenith, was one stupendous portraiture, its lines delicate and micro- graphic, its harmonies infinite, its beauty ineffable. Beyond the audacities of imagination, it was as though some super-human, myriad-handed painter, dipping a million brushes in the colors of the stars, had made the heavens his canvas and had pictured there the seraphic visions of his rapture-ravished soul — a drama set in beauty. Vain is the hope by colouring to display The bright effulgence of the noontide ray Or paint the full-orb' d ruler of the skies With pencib dipt in dull terrestrial dyes. — William Mason : Fresnoy's Art of Painting. [150] id shell, I id asphodt Sterling . The House of Orchids and Other Poems. ir-borne floes of light; waves of rifts of -imperial purple; bursts of ' splendors. of green, straits of tender, heavenly nunicable blue, and archipelagoes of velvety violet •e broken prisms; gleams of beryl and beams id threads oi widening, lengthening lilac, ag and melting into softly shaded hues of indigo gold. re were pools of splendor, petrified billows of color, des of lavender, cataracts of silver and plicatures of nd of pearl, paling into tranquil, blissful white d into graciousness ; and over all a soul-satisfying, transfigurin^grfe&'^e^^ant^nras a benediction. The close-rimmed sky, from castellated I le with its cloud-t; as one stupendoi, elicate ar ro- graphic infinite, Beyond th ;U gh some sup • a million _de the ^ ea laphic visions of his r ished set in beauty. by colouring to dis{v The bright effulgence of the noontide i Or paint the full-orb' d ruler of the With pencils dipt in dull tern William Mason : P. . ning. ■ [iaii]J0] Pleasant at noon beside the vocal brook To lay me down, and watch the floating clouds, And shape to fancy's wild similitudes Their ever-varying forms. — Robert Southey : Joan of Arc. .52 Therefore have I uttered that I understood not ; things too won- derful for me, which I knew not. —Job 42 : 3 : The Bible. Before it our tongues were silent. We had neither words for its description, colors for its limning, nor forms, nor aptitudes of speech for its portrayal. Our vocabularies were too limited; our concepts too meager; the poverty of our flesh-encumbered souls too infinite. And yet, within us there welled the prophecy of a nobler hour — the coming of a time, somewhere in God's vast infinitude, when our unfettered and disencumbered souls should see with illimitable vision, grasp concepts sublimer far than aught we then beheld, utter aptitudes of speech new-born and speak with vocabularies perfect in accuracy and infi- nite in extent and power. Fascinated by the empyreal pageantry, absorbed by the mysterious processes, and enamoured by the pictured harmonies, we lingered on the cliff-reared crest, uncon- scious of the passing hours, until at length there fell about us the azure tide and matured glory of the full-orbed, far-flung day. Then, turning from where we stood, we made our way down the mountain's snow-covered slopes as from a transfiguration. Build thee more stately mansions, my soul, Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea — Oliver Wendell Holmes : The Chambered Nautilus. [153] The spirit of God works everywhere alike, where there is no eye to see, covering all lonely places with an equal glory, using the same pencil and outpouring the same splendor in the caves of the waters where the sea-snakes swim and in the desert where the satyrs dance, among the fir-trees of the stork and the rocks of the conies as among the higher creatures whom He has made capable witnesses of His working. — John Ruskin : Modern Painters. The day and night we had lived were one. The scenes we had looked upon were each a part of a stupendous whole, one mighty, never-ending drama played by Nature's Godful children on a stage colossal, set with worlds and suns and constellations ; with hills and mountains, forests, brooks and rivers ; with cataracts and canyons — com- passed by space-filled, air-built walls — hung with por- traitures rapturous and divine, and roofed with the dread infinity of stellar distance. We had not seen the All-Great — the Absolute One— but we had seen the work of His omnipotent hands; we had beheld His footprints, felt His presence and been touched by His glory. As we descended, we conversed but little and then with hushed voices. But as we walked, our hearts burned within us for our elate and chastened souls were glad with a new and solemn joy. Amid the wonders of His handiwork we had re-acknowledged Him, and pos- sessed again the Great Assurance that some day we should rend the veil, stand in His presence and see Him face to face ! It were a journey like the path to Heaven. — John Milton : Comus. "Gloria in excelsis" still seemed to be sounding over all the white landscape, and our burning hearts were ready for any fate, feeling that, whatever the future might have in store, the treasures we had gained this glorious morning would enrich our lives forever. — John Muir : Travels in Alaska. [154]