Here let me linger. O my native hills! 250 Solemn and watchful o'er the silent waste! How great the joy his bounding bosom thrills, Whose steps, aspiring, mar your summits chaste! Language! thy richest robe, thy rarest taste, How clothe description in befitting dress, When halts imagination's wingéd haste, Awe-spelled in wonder's conscious littleness, Where loom the cloud-crowned monarchs of the wilderness? Grim, storm-plumed guardians! Warriors tempest-mailed, Federal with freedom, fortressing her land! 260 Had primal man the sacred garden[2] tilled, 'Ere earthly scenes your early vision scanned? In spirit form took ye your titan stand[3], Ere rolled a world-creating fiat forth? Or came ye at convulsion's fierce command, 'Mid loud-tongued thunders bursting from the earth, The martial music that proclaimed your war-like birth? Vast, voiceless oracles, whose intelligence Sleeps in the caverns of each stony heart, Yet breathes o'er all a boundless eloquence, 270 What wealth historic might your words impart! Lone, looming, hermit of the hills, apart From where thy banded mates in union dwell! A master lyrist seemingly thou art, Chief harper of a host that round thee swell; And thine the Orphean boon[4], what could withstand thy spell? E'en now it whispers from the graven rock, Scribed with the lightning's pen, in sculpture bold, Defying time and tide and tempest shock, Frowning where seas and centuries have rolled. 280 "Oh were my words[5] thus writ!" That sage of old, Knew he not well, ye mighty tomes of clay, How firm the trust your flinty page might hold? Have ye not scorned the fiats of decay? Are ye not standing now where nations passed away? Thrice wondrous things, once thine to wisely scan, Fast as thy frozen snow-crown, still in store, Hadst thou the melting gift[6]--of sovereign man The sunlike glory--mightest thou restore, Till learning's tide o'erwhelmed the shining shore, 290 With rich revealings of lost realms that rose And fell like frost-hewn flowers thy face before; Blightings which brought them an untimely close-- Perchance, of spirit lore, some mystic mine disclose. But like the laboring brain that burns to speak Mind's inmost thought, in deepest dungeon pent; Or liker still to inward boiling peak Of fires volcanic, vainly seeking vent Where adamantine bolts and bars prevent;-- Thou'rt doomed to utter stillness, and shalt keep 300 The burden of thy bearing till is rent Yon heavenly veil, and earth and air and deep Tell secrets that shall rouse the dead from solemn sleep.