Mountain idylls, and Other Poems | Page 2

the ultimate result be
affluence or a dungeon.
The author of this unpretentious volume has long questioned the
advisability of adding a book to our already inflated and overloaded
literature, unless it should contain something in the nature of a
deviation from beaten literary paths.
Whether the reading public will regard this as such or not is a question
for the future to determine, as every book is a creature of circumstance,
and at the date of its publication an algebraic unknown quantity.
It was not the original intention of the author to publish any of his
effusions in collective form until more mature years and riper judgment
should better qualify him for the task of composition, and should
enable him to still further pursue the important studies of etymology,
rhetoric, Latin and Greek, and complete the education which youthful

environment denied.
On the 17th of March, A.D. 1900, occurred an accident in the form of a
premature mining explosion which banished the light of the Colorado
sun from his eyes forever, adding the almost insurmountable barrier of
total and hopeless blindness to those of limited means and insufficient
education. At first further effort seemed useless, but as time meliorates
in some degree even the most deplorable and distressing physical
conditions, ambition slowly rallied, and while lying for several months
a patient in various hospitals in an ineffectual attempt to regain even
partial sight, the following ideas and efforts of past years were
gradually recalled from the recesses of memory, and reduced to their
present form, in which, with no small hesitation and misgiving, they are
presented to the consideration of the reading public, which in the
humble opinion of the author has frequently failed to receive and
appreciate productions of vastly superior merit.
Ouray, Colorado, March 15, 1901.
[Illustration:
"I stood at sunrise on the topmost part,
Of lofty
mountain, massively sublime."
MOUNT WILSON, SAN MIGUEL COUNTY, COLORADO.]
Mountain Idylls and Other Poems
Grandeur.
Dedicated to the mountains of the San Juan district, Colorado, as seen
from the summit of Mt. Wilson.
I stood at sunrise, on the topmost part
Of lofty mountain, massively
sublime;
A pinnacle of trachyte, seamed and scarred
By countless
generations' ceaseless war
And struggle with the restless elements;

A rugged point, which shot into the air,
As by ambition or desire
impelled
To pierce the eternal precincts of the sky.

Below, outspread,
A scene of such terrific grandeur lay
That reeled
the brain at what the eyes beheld;
The hands would clench
involuntarily
And clutch from intuition for support;
The eyes by
instinct closed, nor dared to gaze
On such an awful and inspiring
sight.
The sun arose with bright transcendent ray,
Up from behind a bleak
and barren reef;
His face resplendent with beatitude,
Solar
effulgence and combustive gleam;
Bathing the scene in such a wealth
of light
That none could marvel that primeval man,
Rude and
untaught, whene'er the sun appeared,
Fell down and worshiped.
A wilderness of weird, fantastic shapes,
Of precipice and stern
declivity;
Of dizzy heights, and towering minarets;
Colossal
columns and basaltic spires
Which pointing heavenward, appeared to
wave
In benediction o'er the depths beneath.
Uneven crags and cliffs of various form;
Abysmal depths, and dire
profundities;
Chasms so deep and awful that the eye
Of soaring
eagle dare not gaze below,
Lest, dizzied, he should lose his aerial
poise,
And headlong falling, reach the gulf beneath.
Majestic turrets, and the stately dome
Which, ovaled by the slow but
tireless hand
Of eons of disintegrating time,
Still with impressive
aspect rears its brow
Defiant of mutation and decay.
[Illustration: "Majestic turrets and the stately dome."
MOUNTAIN VIEW, SAN JUAN, COLORADO.]
The crevice deep and inaccessible;
Fissure and rent, where the
intrusive dike's
Creative and destructive agency
Leaves many an
enduring monument
Of metamorphic and eruptive power;
Of
molten deluge, and volcanic flood;
Fracture and break, the silent
stories tell
Of dire convulsion in the ages past;
Of subterranean

catastrophe,
And cataclysm of internal force.
The trachyte wall, beseamed and battle scarred;
The porphyritic tower
and citadel;
The granite ramparts and embattlements
Of nature's
fort, impregnable and wild,
Stand as a symbol of eternal strength,

And hurl a challenge to the elements!
Cañons of startling and appalling depths,
With caverns, vast and
gloomy, which would seem
Meet for the haunt of centaur or of
gnome;
The gorgon and the labyrinthodon;
The clumsy mammoth
and the dinosaur;
Or all gigantic and unwieldy shapes
Which earth
has seen in the mysterious past,
Would seem in more accord and
harmony
With such surroundings than the puny form
Of
insignificant, conceited man.
And interspersed amid these solemn peaks
Lie many a pleasant vale
and grassy slope,
Besprinkled with the drooping columbine,
And
fragrant growths of all harmonious tints,
Whose variegated colors
punctuate
Grandeur with beauty, and fearless, bloom
In the
forbidding shadow of the cliffs,
And to the margin of the snowy
combs
Which still resist the sun's persuasive ray.
A lakelet, cool, pellucid and serene,
Fed by the drippings from eternal
snows,
Lies like a mirror 'neath a frowning cliff,
Or as a gem,
majestically ensconced
In diadem of crag and pinnacle.
Down towards the distant valley's sultry clime,
Both solitary, and in
straggling groups;
In solid phalanx,