Bayard, awaken not this music strong, While round thy home the indolent sweet breeze Floats lightly as the summer breath of seas O’er which Ulysses heard the Sirens’ song. Dreams of low-lying isles to June belong, And Circe holds us in her haunts of ease; But later, when these high ancestral trees Are sere, and such melodious languors wrong The reddening strength of the autumnal year, Yield to heroic words thy ear and eye;— Intent on these broad pages thou shalt hear The trumpets’ blare, the Argive battle-cry, And see Achilles hurl his hurtling spear, And mark the Trojan arrows make reply! THE MOUNTAIN. Two thousand feet in air it stands Betwixt the bright and shaded lands, Above the regions it divides And borders with its furrowed sides. The seaward valley laughs with light Till the round sun o’erhangs this height; But then the shadow of the crest No more the plains that lengthen west Enshrouds, yet slowly, surely creeps Eastward, until the coolness steeps A darkling league of tilth and wold, And chills the flocks that seek their fold. Not like those ancient summits lone, Mont Blanc, on his eternal throne,— The city-gemmed Peruvian peak,— The sunset-portals landsmen seek, Whose train, to reach the Golden Land, Crawls slow and pathless through the sand,— Or that, whose ice-lit beacon guides The mariner on tropic tides, And flames across the Gulf afar, A torch by day, by night a star,— Not thus, to cleave the outer skies, Does my serener mountain rise, Nor aye forget its gentle birth Upon the dewy, pastoral earth. But ever, in the noonday light, Are scenes whereof I love the sight,— Broad pictures of the lower world Beneath my gladdened eyes unfurled. Irradiate distances reveal Fair nature wed to human weal; The rolling valley made a plain; Its checkered squares of grass and grain; The silvery rye, the golden wheat, The flowery elders where they meet,— Ay, even the springing corn I see, And garden haunts of bird and bee; And where, in daisied meadows, shines The wandering river through its vines, Move specks at random, which I know Are herds a-grazing to and fro. Yet still a goodly height it seems From which the mountain pours his streams, Or hinders, with caressing hands, The sunlight seeking other lands. Like some great giant, strong and proud, He fronts the lowering thunder-cloud, And wrests its treasures, to bestow A guerdon on the realm below; Or, by the deluge roused from sleep Within his bristling forest-keep, Shakes all his pines, and far and wide Sends down a rich, imperious tide. At night the whistling tempests meet In tryst upon his topmost seat, And all the phantoms of the sky Frolic and gibber, storming by.