Poems / William Cullen Bryant [electronic text]

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 gray-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 gray 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-wreaths, lifted and cast, From a thousand boughs, by the rising blast.

His thoughts are alone of those who dwelt 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 Thin 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.

There are mothers—and oh how sadly their eyes On their children's white brows rest; There are youthful lovers—the maiden lies, In a seeming sleep, on the chosen breast; There are fair wan women with moonstruck air, The snow stars flecking their long loose hair.

They eye him not as they pass along, But his hair stands up with dread, When he feels that he moves with that phantom throng, Till those icy turrets are over his head, And the torrent's roar as they enter seems Like a drowsy murmur heard in dreams.

The glittering threshold is scarcely passed, When there gathers and wraps him round A thick white twilight, sullen and vast, In which there is neither form nor sound; The phantoms, the glory, vanish all, With the dying voice of the waterfall.

Slow passes the darkness of that trance, And the youth now faintly sees Huge shadows and gushes of light that dance On a rugged ceiling of unhewn trees, And walls where the skins of beasts are hung, And rifles glitter on antlers strung.

On a couch of shaggy skins he lies; As he strives to raise his head, Hard-featured woodmen, with kindly eyes, Come round him and smooth his furry bed, And bid him rest, for the evening star Is scarcely set, and the day is far.

They had found at eve the dreaming one By the base of that icy steep, When over his stiffening limbs begun The deadly slumber of frost to creep, And they cherished the pale and breathless form, Till the stagnant blood ran free and warm.