February Day on the Columbia in the Mountains [pp. 155-156]

156 Fe~ruary B~y on Ihe Columbia in the Mountains. [Feb.
Trembles the air with summer-warm rays;
Flecked are the waves with silvery foam;
From distant green hills a thin purple haze
Curls up and around a gray, barren dome.
The river comes swelling from old icy shores,
From sculptured black rocks and sand lightly blown;
By rude toppling mountains it purls and it pours,
And pulsing it wets the soon-drying stone.
The canons are dark in yon jagged hills;
There caverns unlock the frigidest gloom.
Unsunned cedars the spotted snow chills,
And high black firs in the dim light loom;
There open ravines toward the dim morning star,
And shattered ascents uphuild their gray sides;
While over escarpment and over each scar
On ice-marbled pillars the snow-water glides:
It glides in a fall as white as sea-fbam,
It falls in a spray as fine as blown rain;
In slow-changing nodules that dreamily come,
It hangs and it glistens like white breakers' mane.
Deep in a cleft in the gelid dark walls,
A black, sunless water obstructedly lies.
No puff of light wind on its surface crawls;
But an eagle above it wheels slowly and flies.
And out of a gully of dark mossy stones
Slow pennons of vapor revolvingly rise.
Loose snow-~eaps are seen that look like white bones,
And at intervals come half audible cries.
But away to the sunlight the bright river goes;
A tall purple mountain stands over its way,
Whose top is all shining with deep winter snows;
Behind it stand peaks in frosty array.
But here we are drifting where sweet sunlight showers,
And are feeling no chill from the cavernous shore.
Though the peak above us icily towers,
No winds from its turrets now wintrily pour.
Warm is the sun, and the air with rich balms
Wreathes for us sleep and weaves for us dreams,
Till we think that we float by islands of palms,
And drift on the waves of tropical streams.
Oh, happiest day, oh, short brilliant hour,
While we float and we drift with ephemeral sails,
Soon, soon will the frost shade of dim evening lower,
Soon roughly will blow the nocturnal gales.
II~ S. lyman.