Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/145

18:^0-40.] GEORGE D. PRENTICE. 129 MAMMOTH CAVE. All day, as day is reckoned on the earth, I've wandered in these dim and awful aisles, Shut from the blue and breezy dome of heaven. While thoughts, wild, drear, and shadowy, have swept Across my awe-struck soul, like specters o'er The wizard's magic glass, or thunder- clouds O'er the blue waters of the deep. And now I'll sit me down upon yon broken rock To muse upon the strange and solemn things Of this mysterious realm. All day my steps Have been amid the beautiful, the wild. The gloomy, the terrific. Crystal founts Almost invisible in their serene And pure transpai'ency — high, pillar'd domes With stars and flowers all fretted like the halls Of Oriental monarchs — rivers dark And drear and voiceless as oblivion's stream. That flows through Death's dim vale of si- lence — gulfs All fathomless, down which the loosened rock Plunges until its far-off echoes come Fainter and fainter like the dying roll Of thunders in the distance — Stygian pools Whose agitated waves give back a sound Hollow and dismal, like the sullen »roar In the volcano's depths — these, these have left Their spell upon me, and their memories Have passed into my spirit, and are now Blent with my being till they seem a part Of my own immortahty. God's hand, At the creation, hollowed out this vast Domain of darkness, where no herb nor flower E'er sprang amid the sands, nor dews nor rains. Nor blessed sunbeams fell with freshening power. Nor gentle breeze its Eden message told Amid the dreadful gloom. Six thousand years Swept o'er the earth ere human footprints marked This subterranean desert. Centuries Like shadows came and passed, and not a sound Was in this realm, save when at intervals. In the long lapse of ages, some huge mass Of overhanging rock fell thundering down. Its echoes sounding through these corridors A moment, and then dying in a hush Of silence, such as brooded o'er the earth When earth was chaos. The great Mas- todon, The dreaded monster of the elder world. Passed o'er this mighty cavern, and his tread Bent the old forest oaks like fragile reeds And made eai'th tremble ; armies in their pride Perchance have met above it in the shock Of war with shout and groan, and clarion blast. And the hoarse echoes of the thunder gun; The storm, the whirlwind, and the hurri- cane Have roared above it, and the bursting cloud Sent down its red and crashing thunder- bolt ; Earthquakes have trampled o'er it in their wrath. Rocking earth's surface as the storm-wind rocks The old Atlantic ; yet no sound of these 9