Strange contrasts here--for on the glacier's height, The tempest raves, and arrowy lightnings leap-- Yet deep beneath, the wild flowers lone and light, On slender stems in breezeless silence sleep. Skyward the racing eagles wildly fling Their savage clamor to the echoing dell-- While sheltered deep, the bee with folded wing, Voluptuous slumbers in his fragrant cell. Around, the splintered rocks are heaped to heaven, With grisly caverns yawning wide between, As if the Titans there had battle given, And left their ruin written on the scene! Yet o'er these ghastly shapes, soft lichens wind, And timid daisies droop, and tranquil flowers A robe of many-colored beauty, bind, As if some vagrant fairy claimed these bowers. III. Fit cradle this--Majestic Stream, for thee! Nursed at the glacier's foot--by tempests fed-- The lightning flashing o'er thy canopy, And thunders pealing round thine infant bed-- The pious Indian marks thy mystic birth, 'Mid storm and cloud, and nature's aspect wild-- And wondering, deems thee not a thing of earth, But great Manitto's fair and favored child. Aye--and the mind, by inspiration taught, Like nature's pupil feels a Presence near, Which bids the bosom tremble with the thought That He who came from Teman hath been here![B] IV. What thronging fancies crowd upon the soul, As from these heights the Giant Stream we trace, And wander with its waters as they roll From hence, to their far ocean dwelling-place-- Marking its birth in this bleak frigid zone, Its conquering march to yonder tropic shore, The boundless valley which it makes its own, With thousand tribute rivers as they pour! No classic page its story to reveal; No nymph, or naïad, sporting in its glades; No banks encrimsoned with heroic steel; And haunted yet by dim poetic shades-- Its annals linger in the eternal rock, Hoary with centuries; in cataracts that sing To the dull ear of ages; in the shock Of plunging glaciers that madly fling, The forest like a flight of spears, aloft: In wooded vales that spread beyond the view; In boundless prairies, blooming fair and soft; In mantling vines that teem with clusters blue; And as the sunny south upon us breathes-- In orange groves that scent the balmy air, And tempt soft summer with its fragrant wreaths, Throughout the year to be a dweller there. V.