THE CATTERSKILL FALLS.

“Midst greens and shades the Catterskill leaps

  From cliffs where the wood-flower clings;

All summer he moistens his verdant steeps

  With the sweet light spray of the mountain springs;

And he shakes the woods on the mountain side,

When they drip with the rains of autumn-tide.

“But when, in the forest bare and old,

  The blast of December calls,

He builds, in the starlight clear and cold,

  A palace of ice where his torrent falls,

With turret, and arch, and fretwork fair,

And pillars blue as the summer air.

“For whom are those glorious chambers wrought,

  In the cold and cloudless night?

Is there neither spirit nor motion of thought

  In forms so lovely and hues so bright?

Hear what the grey-haired woodmen tell

Of this wild stream, and its rocky dell.

“ ’Twas hither a youth of dreamy mood,

  A hundred winters ago,

Had wandered over the mighty wood,

  When the panther’s track was fresh on the snow;

And keen were the winds that came to stir

The long dark boughs of the hemlock fir.

“Too gentle of mien he seemed, and fair,

  For a child of those rugged steeps;

His home lay low in the valley, where

  The kingly Hudson rolls to the deeps;

But he wore the hunter’s frock that day,

And a slender gun on his shoulder lay.

“And here he paused, and against the trunk

  Of a tall grey linden leant,

When the broad clear orb of the sun had sunk

  From his path in the frosty firmament,

And over the round dark edge of the hill

A cold green light was quivering still.

“And the crescent moon, high over the green,

  From a sky of crimson shone,

On that icy palace, whose towers were seen

  To sparkle as if with stars of their own;

While the water fell, with a hollow sound,

’Twixt the glistening pillars ranged around.

“Is that a being of life, that moves

  Where the crystal battlements rise?

A maiden, watching the moon she loves,

  At the twilight hour, with pensive eyes?

Was that a garment which seemed to gleam

Betwixt the eye and the falling stream?

“ ‘Tis only the torrent tumbling o’er,

  In the midst of those glassy walls,

Gushing, and plunging, and beating the floor

  Of the rocky basin in which it falls:

'Tis only the torrent—but why that start?

Why gazes the youth with a throbbing heart?

“He thinks no more of his home afar,

  Where his sire and sister wait;

He heeds no longer how star after star

  Looks forth on the night, as the hour grows late.

He heeds not the snow-wreath, lifted and cast

From a thousand boughs, by the rising blast.

“His thoughts are alone of those who dwell

  In the halls of frost and snow,

Who pass where the crystal domes upswell

  From the alabaster floors below,

Where the frost-trees bourgeon with leaf and spray,

And frost-gems scatter a silvery day.

“ ‘And oh that those glorious haunts were mine!’

  He speaks, and throughout the glen

Their shadows swim in the faint moonshine,

  And take a ghastly likeness of men,

As if the slain by the wintry storms

Came forth to the air in their earthly forms.

“There pass the chasers of seal and whale,

  With their weapons quaint and grim,

And bands of warriors in glimmering mail,

  And herdsmen and hunters huge of limb—

There are naked arms, with bow and spear,

And furry gauntlets the carbine rear.