Thou gray old cliff, like turret raised on high,
With light-house mingling with the summer sky,
How long in lonely grandeur hast thou stood,
Braving alike the wild winds and the flood?
What howling gales have swept those shores along,
What tempests dire have piped their dismal song.
And lightnings glared those towering trees among?

And oft, as now, the summer sun has shed
His golden glories round thy mountain head,
And tarried there with late and lingering hues,
While all below was steeped in twilight dews,
And night's proud queen, in ages past, as now,
Hung her pale crescent o'er thy beetling brow.
Soft lamp-that lights the happy to their rest,
But wakes fresh anguish in the hapless breast,
And calls it forth a restless ghost, to glide
In lonely sadness up the mountain side;
And couldst not thou, oh! giant of the past,
Some far off knowledge o'er my senses cast,
Sigh in the hollow moanings of the gale,
And of past ages tell mysterious tale-
Speak of those ages of primeval worth,
And all the hidden wonders of thy birth-
Convulsions strange that heaved thy mighty breast,
And raised the stately masses of thy crest?

Perchance the Indian climbed thy rugged side,
Ere the pale face subdued his warlike pride,
And bent him down to kneel, to serve, to toil,
To alien shrines upon his native soil.
It needs not thee, O mount! to tell the story
That stained the wreath of many a hero's glory;
But Nature's mysteries must ever rest
Within the gloomy confines of thy breast,
Where wealth, uncounted, hapless lies concealed,
Locked in thine inmost temple unrevealed.