Classic Poem

BY EPHRAIM PEABODY .

Sundered and riven apart, as if
?By some vast earthquake-shock,
Sheer down and deep on either side,
?Descend the walls of rock;
And fast between the fronting sides,
?From their far forest head,
The waters flow, and flash, and fall
?Over their shelving bed.
Eternally, eternally,
?The ceaseless waters flow,
And o'er the brink of the abyss
?The forests stoop and grow;
And silently and solemnly,
?The yew-tree casts its shade,
And the massive shadows of the oak
?Across the gulf are laid.
Up each steep rock-built parapet
?The moss and lichen cling,
And tender cliff-flowers from each rift
?In timid beauty spring;
And sanetuaried from human feet,
?No sound the ear receives,
Save from the falling waters,
?And the wind-stirred boughs and leaves.
O'er all there broods repose; the breeze
?Lingers as it goes past;
The squirrel's foot sounds loud among
?The leaves by autumn cast;
And the lonely bird, whose glancing wing
?Flits restlessly among
The boughs, stops doubtfully, and checks
?The sudden burst of song.
And silently, year after year
?Is ushered in and goes,
And time, amid these quiet scenes,
?No other measure knows
But the wakening and the sleep of birds,
?The dawn and shut of day,
And the changes of the forest leaves,
?From budding to decay.
The wilderness is still; the long,
?Long sleep of ages gone,
With its unmoving presence, fills
?These distant shades and lone;
And changing dynasties, and thrones
?Cast down, send hither brief
And fainter echoes than the fall
?Of autumn's whithered leaf.
The selfsame rest is here, as when
?The Indian made his bed
Beneath the trees, and the mild stars
?Shone in upon his head;
Or when the stag here sought the cool
?Amid the noonday's heat,
Unstartled by the rifle
?Or the tread of hunter's fect.
It is a holy spot; wide lies
?The unbroken hush of woods,
And green-arched pathways lead away
?Through hermit solitudes;
And ceaselessly, and ceaselessly,
?The sliding stream goes past,
And bending over all the hills
?The sky's blue dome is cast.
And far away from the world's jars,
?The heart looks up to Him,
Whose presence seems more near amid
?The lorests vast and dim:
And wilderness, and sky, and earth
?By man unmarred, untrod,
And nature's quiet courses, show
?The image of their God.
But the time comes when this repose
?Shall be disturbed and gone,
When the woodman's axe shall lay
?The valleys open to the sun;
When the old Wilderness shall fall,
?And the unsheltered stream,
In all its windings, find no shade
?From summer's fervent beam.
But still the naked heavens shall rest
?Upon the horizon's verge,
And the hurrying waters o'er their bed
?Their rapid current urge;
And hills and vales lie green, while He
?Who sees the sparrow fall,
Shall shed, with an indulgent love,
?A light and peace o'er all.