72

THE HUNTER'S VISION.

Forward he leaned, and headlong down
Plunged from that craggy wall,

He saw the rocks, steep, stern, and brown,
An instant, in his fall;

A frightful instant-and no more,

The dream and life at once were o'er.

CATTERSKILL FALLS.

MIDST greens and shades the Catterskill leaps,
From cliffs where the wood-flower clings;

All summer he moistens his verdant steeps

With the sweet light spray of the mountain springs; And he shakes the woods on the mountain side, When they drip with the rains of autumn tide.

But when, in the forest bare and old,

The blast of December calls,

He builds, in the starlight clear and cold,
A palace of ice where his torrent falls,
With turret, and arch, and fretwork fair,
And pillars blue as the summer air.

For whom are those glorious chambers wrought,
In the cold and cloudless night?

Is there neither spirit nor motion of thought
In forms so lovely and hues so bright?
Hear what the gray-haired woodmen tell
Of this wild stream and its rocky dell.

74

CATTERSKILL FALLS.

"Twas hither a youth of dreamy mood,

A hundred winters ago,

Had wandered over the mighty wood,

When the panther's track was fresh on the snow,

And keen were the winds that came to stir
The long dark boughs of the hemlock fir.

Too gentle of mien he seemed and fair,
For a child of those rugged steeps;
His home lay low in the valley where

The kingly Hudson rolls to the deeps;
But he wore the hunter's frock that day,
And a slender gun on his shoulder lay.

And here he paused, and against the trunk

Of a tall gray linden leant,

When the broad clear orb of the sun had sunk
From his path in the frosty firmament,
And over the round dark edge of the hill
A cold green light was quivering still.

And the crescent moon, high over the green,
From a sky of crimson shone,

On that icy palace, whose towers were seen

To sparkle as if with stars of their own;
While the water fell, with a hollow sound,
'Twixt the glistening pillars ranged around.

Is that a being of life, that moves

Where the crystal battlements rise?

CATTERSKILL FALLS.

A maiden, watching the moon she loves,
At the twilight hour, with pensive eyes?
Was that a garment which seemed to gleam
Betwixt the eye and the falling stream?

'Tis only the torrent, tumbling o'er,

In the midst of those glassy walls,
Gushing, and plunging, and beating the floor
Of the rocky basin in which it falls.
'Tis only the torrent—but why that start?
Why gazes the youth with a throbbing heart?

He thinks no more of his home afar,

Where his sire and sister wait.

He heeds no longer how star after star

Looks forth on the night, as the hour grows

He heeds not the snow-wreaths, lifted and cast,
From a thousand boughs, by the rising blast.

His thoughts are alone of those who dwell
In the halls of frost and snow,

Who pass where the crystal domes upswell
From the alabaster floors below,

late.

Where the frost-trees bourgeon with leaf and spray,

And frost-gems scatter a silvery day.

"And oh that those glorious haunts were mine!"

He speaks, and throughout the glen

Thin shadows swim in the faint moonshine,

And take a ghastly likeness of men,

75

76

CATTERSKILL FALLS.

As if the slain by the wintry storms

Came forth to the air in their earthly forms.

There pass the chasers of seal and whale,
With their weapons quaint and grim,
And bands of warriors in glimmering mail,
And herdsmen and hunters huge of limb.
There are naked arms, with bow and spear,
And furry gauntlets the carbine rear.

There are mothers-and oh how sadly their eyes
On their children's white brows rest;
There are youthful lovers-the maiden lies,

In a seeming sleep, on the chosen breast;
There are fair wan women with moonstruck air,
The snow stars flecking their long loose hair.

They eye him not as they pass along,

But his hair stands up with dread,

When he feels that he moves with that phantom throng,
Till those icy turrets are over his head,

And the torrent's roar as they enter seems
Like a drowsy murmur heard in dreams.

The glittering threshold is scarcely passed,
When there gathers and wraps him round
A thick white twilight, sullen and vast,

In which there is neither form nor sound;
The phantoms, the glory, vanish all,
With the dying voice of the waterfall.