Page:A Tale of the Secret Tribunal.pdf/42

The forest's whisper breathes a tone,
Appalling, as from worlds unknown;
The mystic gloom of wood and cave
Is fill'd with shadows of the grave;
In noon's deep calm the sunbeams dart
A blaze, that seems to search his heart;
The pure, eternal stars of night,
Upbraid him with their silent light,
And the dread spirit, which pervades,
And hallows earth's most lonely shades,
In every scene, in every hour,
Surrounds him with chastising power,
With nameless fear his soul to thrill,
Heard, felt, acknowledg'd, present still!

'Twas the chilly close of an Autumn day,
And the leaves fell thick o'er the wanderers' way,
The rustling pines, with a hollow sound,
Foretold the tempest gathering round,
And the skirts of the western clouds were spread
With a tinge of wild and stormy red,
That seem'd, through the twilight forest bowers,
Like the glare of a city's blazing towers;
But they, who far from cities fled,
And shrunk from the print of human tread,
Had reach'd a desert-scene unknown,
So strangely wild, so deeply lone,
That a nameless feeling, unconfess'd,
And undefin'd, their souls oppress'd.
Rocks pil'd on rocks, around them hurl'd,
Lay like the ruins of a world,
Left by an earthquake's final throes,
In deep and desolate repose;
Things of eternity, whose forms
Bore record of ten thousand storms!