lets
That o'erhang the high canyons,
Passing where the shepherds
And the flocks they pipe to lag.

I'm tramping thro the mountains
Where the pines in proud procession
Climb like a hardy host
To halo-heights of sun.
I'm listening for the sallies
Of the avalanche's Hessian
Hurl of ice and granite
Into gulfs Avernian.

I'm tramping thro the mountains
And the wind is yodling to me
Yearnings of the glaciers
To flow to summer lands.
I'm treading up the valleys
With no wanting to undo me--
For to-day I'm goalless
And the great God understands!

THE MAN OF MIGHT

No moment drooped between his thought and action,
No morrow died between his dream and deed.
Within his soul there was no fatal faction
That could betray him in his hour of need.

IN TIME OF AWE

The fierce sea-sunset over the world
Springs like a wounded spirit,
The waves all day have hissed and hurled
Their fangs and the spray has swept and swirled,
And ships in the gray gale's lair have furled
Their sails--well may they fear it!

The night will be but a monstrous seethe
Of terrors elemental.
The clouds will wrap in a ghastly wreath
Of gloom the winds that in them breathe,
And all that lives in the sea beneath
By fear shall be made gentle;

And sink down, down to the nether deeps,
Below the foam and fretting.
Down where the sullen water sleeps
Alway and the slow sand coldly creeps
Over the lone wreck, which Death keeps
To guard him 'gainst forgetting.

And there in the ominous vast calm
They'll harbour, like enchanted
Chill shapes he has strangely conjured from
The silence of his masterdom;
There float till again they feel the qualm
Of hunger thro them panted.

And then once more far up will they spring,
To drift and sport and plunder,
Shark, eel and whale and devil-thing,
With tooth to rend and tail to sting.
To the sea, O God, does horror cling
And haunting past all wonder.

SUNRISE IN UTAH

The dun sand-cliffs that break the desert's sea
Rose suddenly upon my sight at dawn,
And terrible in an eternity
Of death took silently the sunrise on.
Purple funereal from rifted skies
Swept down across their proud sterility,
Only to die as here all glory dies,
On barrenness I did not dream could be.
O God, for a bird-song! or opening lips
Of but one flower upon the fatal air,
For but the voice of water as it drips,
Or stir of leaves the day-wind makes aware!
O God, for these,