You remember how the mist, When we climbed to Devil's Den, Pearly in the mountain glen, And above us, amethyst, Throbbed or circled? then away, Through the wildwoods opposite, Torn and scattered, morning-lit, Vanished into dewy gray?-- Vague as in romance we saw, From the fog, one riven trunk, Talon-like with branches shrunk, Thrust a monster dragon claw. And we climbed for hours through The dawn-dripping Jellicoes, To a wooded rock that shows Undulating leagues of blue Summits; mountain-chains that lie Dark with forests; bar on bar, Ranging their irregular Purple peaks beneath a sky Soft as slumber. Range on range Billow their enormous spines, Where the rocks and priestly pines Sit eternal, without change. We were sons of Nature then: She had taken us to her, Signalized by brier and burr, Something more to her than men: Pupils of her lofty moods, From her bloom-anointed looks, Wisdom of no man-made books Learned we in those solitudes: How the seed supplied the flower; How the sapling held the oak; How within the vine awoke The wild impulse still to tower; How in fantasy or mirth, Springing from her footsteps there, Curious fungi everywhere Bulged, exuded from the earth; Coral vegetable things, That the underworld exhaled, Bulbous, crystal-ribbed and scaled, Many colored and in rings, Like the Indian-Pipe that grew Pink and white in loamy cracks, Flowers of a natural wax, She had turned her fancy to.-- On that laureled precipice, Where the chestnuts dropped their burrs, Sweet with balsam of the firs, First we felt her mother kiss Full of heaven and the wind; While the forests, wood on wood, Murmured like a multitude Giving praise where none hath sinned.-- Freedom met us there; we saw Freedom giving audience; In her face the eloquence, Lightning-like, of love and law: Round her, with majestic hips, Lay the giant mountains; there Near her, cataracts tossed their hair, God and thunder on their lips.-- Oft an eagle, or a hawk, Or a scavenger, we knew Winged through altitudes of blue, By its shadow on the rock. Or a cloud of templed white Moved, a lazy berg of pearl, Through the sky's pacific swirl, Shot with cool cerulean light. So we dreamed an hour upon That warm rock the lichens mossed, While around us foliage tossed Coins, gold-minted of the sun: Then arose; and a ravine, Which a torrent once had worn, Made our roadway to the corn, In the valley, deep and green; And the farm house with its bees, Where old-fashioned flowers spun Gay rag-carpets in the sun, Hid among the apple trees. Here we watched the twilight fall; O'er Wolf-Mountain sunset made A huge rhododendron rayed