Poems of Philip Henry Savage / Philip Henry Savage [electronic text]

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MOOSILAUKE IN DECEMBER

THE wet, brown leaves of winter on the ground Unkempt they looked or evil, one by one Called back to vision by a careless sun; He should by this have reached his southern bound Leaving December earth all straitly gowned In decent white; but here we trod upon Her bosom black, uncovered and undone, And shrank from many a wet and naked wound. The Parthian sun his arrows to the head Drew, and within the field a little rill Beneath an edge of morning ice awoke; A line down through the mat-brown grass it led White, threaded with the blue the heavens spill, And tinkled coldly past a frozen oak.

Light veils of snow the west wind bore along, White shadows, drifted through the upper air Above the valley; they were very fair And passed in music like a summer song. I stood upon a mountain; here the strong Wild-Ammonoosuc rolled in forests bare, A tumult in his hollow pathway; there Whispered through Wildwood with an icy tongue. The sunlight shone on Kinsman through the cloud And turned the little falling snow to gold Which never reached the earth, but it went back Into the chambers of the air; the loud, White shepherd west wind drove into the fold And forests waving showed his vanished track.

Standing above the Tunnel gorge, the brook Unseen, unheard below I knew laid out And trimmed its tenements for April's trout, Rested and ran from hidden nook to nook. The wintry forests in the wind had shook December from their branches; round about, The sun had aided in the season's rout To Moosilauke; and when to him I look, White snow and winter build in me a sense, Structured on beauty awful and serene, Of majesty, a pressing sense of fear. I never saw a vision more intense In awfulness than that tremendous scene — Black Moosilauke, uprising dark and near!

So very near! Far down, the Tunnel run Crept out beneath the mountain's heavy base; Buttress and bastion mounting I could trace In upright courses to the supreme One, High, distant dome where-over bits of sun Ran with the rolling clouds a windy race. But all beneath was blackness, and my face A breath as of the mountain fell upon. A whisper from the mountain came across, So dark, so strong! a breath in blackness drawn, Long drawn and deep, so near we were and high! And then it seemed a simple child might toss Against the opposèd wall a pebble-stone, Deep in the Tunnel gorge to roll and lie.