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Library of the best American literature: Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers

General

Library of the best American literature: Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers

American literature

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                         THE ALPINE FLOWERS.

    Meek dwellers mid yon terror stricken cliffs!
    With brows so pure, and incense breathing lips,
    Whence are ye? Did some white winged messenger
    On Mercy’s missions trust your timid germ
    To the cold cradle of eternal snows?
    Or, breathing on the callous icicles,
    Did them with tear drops nurse ye?――
                                    ――Tree nor shrub
    Dare that drear atmosphere; no polar pine
    Uprears a veteran front; yet there ye stand,
    Leaning your cheeks against the thick ribbed ice,
    And looking up with brilliant eyes to Him
    Who bids you bloom unblanched amid the waste
    Of desolation. Man, who, panting, toils
    O’er slippery steeps, or, trembling, treads the verge
    Of yawning gulfs, o’er which the headlong plunge
    Is to eternity, looks shuddering up,
    And marks ye in your placid loveliness――
    Fearless, yet frail――and, clasping his chill hands,
    Blesses your pencilled beauty. Mid the pomp
    Of mountain summits rushing on the sky,
    And chaining the rapt soul in breathless awe,
    He bows to bind you drooping to his breast,
    Inhales your spirit from the frost winged gale
    And freer dreams of heaven.

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                               NIAGARA.

    FLOW on, for ever, in thy glorious robe
    Of terror and of beauty. Yea, flow on
    Unfathomed and resistless. God hath set
    His rainbow on thy forehead, and the cloud
    Mantled around thy feet. And he doth give
    Thy voice of thunder power to speak of him
    Eternally――bidding the lip of man
    Keep silence――and upon thy rocky altar pour
    Incense of awe struck praise. Ah! who can dare
    To lift the insect trump of earthly hope,
    Or love, or sorrow, mid the peal sublime
    Of thy tremendous hymn? Even Ocean shrink
    Back from thy brotherhood: and all his waves
    Retire abashed. For he doth sometimes seem
    To sleep like a spent laborer, and recall
    His wearied billows from their vexing play,
    And lull them to a cradle calm: but thou,
    With everlasting, undecaying tide,
    Dost rest not, night or day. The morning stars,
    When first they sang o’er young Creation’s birth,
    Heard thy deep anthem; and those wrecking fires,
    That wait the archangel’s signal to dissolve
    This solid earth, shall find JEHOVAH’s name
    Graven, as with a thousand diamond spears,
    Of thine unending volume. Every leaf,
    That lifts itself within thy wide domain,
    Doth gather greenness from thy living spray,
    Yet tremble at the baptism. Lo! yon birds
    Do boldly venture near, and bathe their wing
    Amid thy mist and foam. ’Tis meet for them
    To touch thy garment’s hem, and lightly stir
    The snowy leaflets of thy vapor wreath,
    For they may sport unharmed amid the cloud,
    Or listen at the echoing gate of heaven,
    Without reproof.

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