THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN.
HIGH in the dark Franconia Notch,
Between the sunset and the lake,
Alone on his eternal watch,
From under brows that ache
With corrugated centuries, behold
The Old Man of the Mountain, passing old!
A Memnon to the sunbeams mute
In vain the blush of morning burns,
Or ripe eve mocks the Hesperian fruit,
To left nor right he turns;
The lake which glasses him, in its romance
Of mural rounding, never wins a glance.
And more than Memnon’s years are in
The weakness of that senile mouth,
But strength is in the massive chin,
Firm-set. And, facing south,
He looks with level eyes, and looks afar,
As over him in heaven the polar star.
The heavens are old, and so is he;
And when in torrents through the gorge
The mist is pouring like a sea,
When equinoxes scourge,
Or whips of winter, when the lightnings strike,
Grand his appeal as Lear’s is—like to like.
And now, all thunder-scarred and worn
With tempest, how sublime a thing
I see him, lonely and forlorn,
Yet “every inch a king.”
Nay, wherefore with an alien atmosphere
Invest this monumental mountain? Here
The Red Man’s Manitou he stood;
Here like an ancient brave he stands,
All pathos, patience, fortitude,
The dispossessed of lands.
The sunset clouds, the autumnal foliage,
Against the solitude of his great age
Like billows break. From crag and cliff,
For all the aerial gold he wears,
And glory of the maple leaf,
On and away he stares,
Right on into the dumb eternity,
And lets unchallenged time and tide go by.
Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 68 (May 1884):
851.
