Not in the Orient lies it,
Where the destroying sirocco
Scourges the Libyan desert,
Wafting the furnace-hot sand-drifts
Down to the populous rivers,
Whelming them little by little.
Not in the mountains lies it,
The bleak Uralian Mountains,
Always draped in their snow-veils
And half the year frozen all sombre,
Where jagged larches and spruces
Half shade, overhanging, the cavernous
Glens, that re-echo the wolf's howl,
Long-drawn note of lamentation.
No, it lies far away in the grass-sea,
The rolling prairie sparse timbered,
The wonderful land, never wholly
Reclaimed from Nature's dominion,
And plunged, while yet in the shaping
Of Husbandry's magical fingers,
Into the caldron of Moloch,
The fearful war of the border.
See, my friend, it is sunset,
Aye and after, for yonder
Far adown in the west there,
Behind the waves of the prairie,
Rises a cone of brightness,
Or rather, a semicircle.
A while ago it was glorious,
Rich with imperial beauty;
And even now it tinges,
With faint hues and ever changing,
The straggling edges of cloudland
That dip in its dimming radiance, —
A radiance that would be lurid,
But it has grown too feeble,
And seems like a prophet fast dying,
Who, seeing a blood-red future,
Lacks but the power of translating
The evil truth of his vision.
Overhead rides the sickly
Moon that lightens Gehenna,
Flooding the wavering landscape
With a mist-gleam almost infernal;
Such changes it works upon objects,
Making them larger and vaguer,
And filling with life and with spirit.
While a few light handfuls of cloud-fleece
Float about and before her,
Veiling her countenance ghastly,
That peereth forth through the openings,
Like a fiend through a tattered grave-cloth,
Playing as children with children,
In bitter and cruel mockery.
Behind on the road we have travelled,
Far, far behind, where a dwelling
Is, or should be, there is only
A light newly lighted, that broadens
And seems to promise a welcome.
So softly effulgent is it
One almost might deem the warm-hearted
Settler's own hospitable spirit
Beamed out to us over the prairie;
Luring us back into safety,
Back from the terror before us,
The Valley of the Shadow of Death.
Far ahead on the horizon
Glimmer and glower at intervals
(Glower like a dawn ill-fated)
The lurid fires of the prairie.
Some, the more distant, seem only
Like an unchanging aurora,
A fallen aurora, resembling
Its heavenly kin as a demon
Resembles a glorious angel,
And bound to the earth for a penance.
Some, nearer, seem only like hell-fires
Rising all smoke-stained and ruddy,
And flaring their insolent menace
Into the vastness of heaven.
Nearer yet than the hell-fires,
Wave after wave, rolling inward,
Of prairie brown and grass-covered,
Leads to the last of the hill-sides,
Sloping steeply toward us.
Not bare is this nor treeless,
But never a leaf in the moonlight
Glistens, for all have been girdled.
There they stand, and among them
Rots a once tenanted cabin,
Tenantless now and lifeless.
The logs of the corn-crib have tumbled,
The stable is lying all shapeless,
A mass of straw and of brushwood.
The door has fallen from its hinges;
The mud that plastered the crannies
Has dropped, leaving windows where windows
Were never before, and the roofwork
In places is half battered inward.
Where, ah! where are the owners?
Who can answer the question?
Hark! from over the hill-side,
Borne on the rustling night-wind,
Comes the reply mysterious,
Curdling the blood and chilling;
And, keeping time to a requiem,
Unheard yet felt, all the branches,
Bare as the arms of a skeleton,
Upward wave and downward,
Forward wave with vehemence,
Ever saying, distinctly
As aught inanimate can say,
" Back! back! here Death reigneth.
Death, the mystical monarch.
Death, the ruler of shadows.
Back from the valley of the shadow,
The Valley of the Shadow of Death! "
Up from the gulf there riseth,
Yea, from but just beneath us,
The fearsome chorus nocturnal.
The katydid and cicala
Vie with their shrill-toned voices;
The one in the shadowy tree-tops,
The other among the lush grass-blades,
Sounds all unearthly at night-time.
The white owl, too, with his dolorous
Great tones, breaks forth in a startling
Wail of discordant horror,
Striking the sensitive ear-drum
With a jar that makes one shudder.
The frogs, too, down by the water
Join in a varied concert,
From the deep-mouthed bawl of the blood-noun
To the slender note of the tree-toad,
And the thin, fine, tremulous music
That sounds like the song of an insect,
Varied but awfully lonesome
At night-time out on the prairie.
Over them all sings the whippoorwill,
Bird of ceaseless complaining,
Which has but one note, and that only
A note of lamentation;
Stealing forth in the gloaming,
Close to the ground like a grave-ghost,
Sighing his woes in the darkness.
" Whippoorwill, whippoorwill, whip, whip, " —
A score overslough one another
In a flood of unnatural music.
Here on the breezy uplands
We have but the field-lark's whistle,
The " Bob White " call of the partridge,
The cry of rejoicing night-hawks, —
Pleasant sounds only and cheering.
We are going out of all blitheness,
Out of all joyous existence,
Into the sombre chorus,
Into the shadowy valley,
The Valley of the Shadow of Death.
Down in that gulf chaotic,
Down in that nightmare mingling,
What forms unknown to creation,
What ghastly visions infernal,
Await our approach, but to vanish
And come again, and surround us,
Fleeting, but ever thickening,
Thickening, growing more hideous,
Nearing, and nearing, and nearing,
Until, overwhelmed and abysmed,
We sink whither man may not follow.
So the thick coming fancies
Gather, as we go downward,
Steadily, steadily downward,
Downward with pale resolution,
Into the sombre chorus,
Into the shadowy valley.
Where the destroying sirocco
Scourges the Libyan desert,
Wafting the furnace-hot sand-drifts
Down to the populous rivers,
Whelming them little by little.
Not in the mountains lies it,
The bleak Uralian Mountains,
Always draped in their snow-veils
And half the year frozen all sombre,
Where jagged larches and spruces
Half shade, overhanging, the cavernous
Glens, that re-echo the wolf's howl,
Long-drawn note of lamentation.
No, it lies far away in the grass-sea,
The rolling prairie sparse timbered,
The wonderful land, never wholly
Reclaimed from Nature's dominion,
And plunged, while yet in the shaping
Of Husbandry's magical fingers,
Into the caldron of Moloch,
The fearful war of the border.
See, my friend, it is sunset,
Aye and after, for yonder
Far adown in the west there,
Behind the waves of the prairie,
Rises a cone of brightness,
Or rather, a semicircle.
A while ago it was glorious,
Rich with imperial beauty;
And even now it tinges,
With faint hues and ever changing,
The straggling edges of cloudland
That dip in its dimming radiance, —
A radiance that would be lurid,
But it has grown too feeble,
And seems like a prophet fast dying,
Who, seeing a blood-red future,
Lacks but the power of translating
The evil truth of his vision.
Overhead rides the sickly
Moon that lightens Gehenna,
Flooding the wavering landscape
With a mist-gleam almost infernal;
Such changes it works upon objects,
Making them larger and vaguer,
And filling with life and with spirit.
While a few light handfuls of cloud-fleece
Float about and before her,
Veiling her countenance ghastly,
That peereth forth through the openings,
Like a fiend through a tattered grave-cloth,
Playing as children with children,
In bitter and cruel mockery.
Behind on the road we have travelled,
Far, far behind, where a dwelling
Is, or should be, there is only
A light newly lighted, that broadens
And seems to promise a welcome.
So softly effulgent is it
One almost might deem the warm-hearted
Settler's own hospitable spirit
Beamed out to us over the prairie;
Luring us back into safety,
Back from the terror before us,
The Valley of the Shadow of Death.
Far ahead on the horizon
Glimmer and glower at intervals
(Glower like a dawn ill-fated)
The lurid fires of the prairie.
Some, the more distant, seem only
Like an unchanging aurora,
A fallen aurora, resembling
Its heavenly kin as a demon
Resembles a glorious angel,
And bound to the earth for a penance.
Some, nearer, seem only like hell-fires
Rising all smoke-stained and ruddy,
And flaring their insolent menace
Into the vastness of heaven.
Nearer yet than the hell-fires,
Wave after wave, rolling inward,
Of prairie brown and grass-covered,
Leads to the last of the hill-sides,
Sloping steeply toward us.
Not bare is this nor treeless,
But never a leaf in the moonlight
Glistens, for all have been girdled.
There they stand, and among them
Rots a once tenanted cabin,
Tenantless now and lifeless.
The logs of the corn-crib have tumbled,
The stable is lying all shapeless,
A mass of straw and of brushwood.
The door has fallen from its hinges;
The mud that plastered the crannies
Has dropped, leaving windows where windows
Were never before, and the roofwork
In places is half battered inward.
Where, ah! where are the owners?
Who can answer the question?
Hark! from over the hill-side,
Borne on the rustling night-wind,
Comes the reply mysterious,
Curdling the blood and chilling;
And, keeping time to a requiem,
Unheard yet felt, all the branches,
Bare as the arms of a skeleton,
Upward wave and downward,
Forward wave with vehemence,
Ever saying, distinctly
As aught inanimate can say,
" Back! back! here Death reigneth.
Death, the mystical monarch.
Death, the ruler of shadows.
Back from the valley of the shadow,
The Valley of the Shadow of Death! "
Up from the gulf there riseth,
Yea, from but just beneath us,
The fearsome chorus nocturnal.
The katydid and cicala
Vie with their shrill-toned voices;
The one in the shadowy tree-tops,
The other among the lush grass-blades,
Sounds all unearthly at night-time.
The white owl, too, with his dolorous
Great tones, breaks forth in a startling
Wail of discordant horror,
Striking the sensitive ear-drum
With a jar that makes one shudder.
The frogs, too, down by the water
Join in a varied concert,
From the deep-mouthed bawl of the blood-noun
To the slender note of the tree-toad,
And the thin, fine, tremulous music
That sounds like the song of an insect,
Varied but awfully lonesome
At night-time out on the prairie.
Over them all sings the whippoorwill,
Bird of ceaseless complaining,
Which has but one note, and that only
A note of lamentation;
Stealing forth in the gloaming,
Close to the ground like a grave-ghost,
Sighing his woes in the darkness.
" Whippoorwill, whippoorwill, whip, whip, " —
A score overslough one another
In a flood of unnatural music.
Here on the breezy uplands
We have but the field-lark's whistle,
The " Bob White " call of the partridge,
The cry of rejoicing night-hawks, —
Pleasant sounds only and cheering.
We are going out of all blitheness,
Out of all joyous existence,
Into the sombre chorus,
Into the shadowy valley,
The Valley of the Shadow of Death.
Down in that gulf chaotic,
Down in that nightmare mingling,
What forms unknown to creation,
What ghastly visions infernal,
Await our approach, but to vanish
And come again, and surround us,
Fleeting, but ever thickening,
Thickening, growing more hideous,
Nearing, and nearing, and nearing,
Until, overwhelmed and abysmed,
We sink whither man may not follow.
So the thick coming fancies
Gather, as we go downward,
Steadily, steadily downward,
Downward with pale resolution,
Into the sombre chorus,
Into the shadowy valley.