To a Mountain Cataract

UNTAMEABLE Young One!
How loudly, how proudly,
Thou thunderest forth from the firecloven mountain!

No mortal eye ever beheld

Thy cradle, thou Strong One!

On no ear ever knelled

The first cry of the Babe, the Wild Babe of the Fountain!

How beauteous thou art,

With those long silver locks!

How dreadful thou art
In each volley that shocks the reverberant rocks I

Pines tremble before thee;

The roots of their oldest

Thou wrenchest, like Death!

Rocks vainly implore thee;

Thou graspest the boldest,
And hurlest them, laughing, like pebbles, beneath!

Long ago, for thy glory,
The sun of the hoary
Mists over thee made
An imperial pavilion!
Long ago he arrayed
The bright bows that o'erarch thee in gold and vermillion!

And sweepest thou forth

To the green Summer sea?
Is thy liberty, then, of no worth?
Bring the mutinous crags, the torn tannen, no glee,
The reverberant cliffs no delight unto thee?

What! speedest along

To the sleek Summer sea,
When as yet thou art free and art strong,

Yea, as a god strong,

And as a god free?

The waves, as they bask in the richness of Noon,

Seem full of luxuriant repose,
Nor look they less calm in the beams of the Moon,

Less bright when the Summer eve glows.

But, what profits the boon
Of luxuriant repose,

Oh! what are the smiles of the friendliest moon,
Or the lustre that glows
In the West at the close
Of a long Summer day,

If the heart, if the soul have been yielded away,
And are sleeping in Slavery's harness?
Beware! — there are mists atween thee

And the Farness,
And masked is the snare
Of the specious Betrayer!

Beware!
There is Death in the green of the meadowy Sea!

O! rush not along
To the smooth Summer Sea I
"When as yet thou art free and art strong,
Yea, as a god strong,
And as a god free!