Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/289

Let him sing of the homeless hero
Who loitered around your base,
When man, in a spacious freedom,
Lived for the camp and the chase ;
Sing of the lengthened pack trains
That wound through thy solitudes—
Of their songs that never echoed
In the wilderness of other woods.

Up high on the rounded summit
A still white cover is spread,
And a frozen cloud hangs over,
Still and stark as the dead;
On yon point the trees bend over
And crouch from the tyrannous wind,
Till he sighs in the valley repentful
And wails, "peccavi, I sinned!"
In the depths a stillness is waiting —
A slumberous stillness that fills
The air with a dull oppression,
And the heart with icy thrills.

Sing of a weary miner,
Who long, long years ago
Traversed these lonesome gulches
And climbed to a summit of snow ;
In the dead and lonely silence
He lighted his red camp-fire,
And it warmed the heart of the forest,
Reaching up higher and higher,
And the gray side of the mountain
Comes forth like a scenic show,
With a group of pantomime shadows
Wandering to and fro;

And the sound of the sea comes to him
Like thunders of distant cars;
The brook leaps up from the canyon
And catches the listless stars;