New-York tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1841-1842, 1841-11-29
81 cLYcUs.


l. was tn. noon of night, yet darkness lent
A sad and solemn witchery to the hour;
No pa!liI moon poured forth her baleful light,
Nor glared malignant on the sacred scene;
But the blue vault, the canopy d heaven,
Hang with its countless, ever burning cressets,
Whose silver fires by bouudless ether fed,
No lapse of time quench, no waste decay
Difused soft and melancholy light
Throughout the halowed place, dimly revealing
The thick ming forms of hoar and leafiess trees.
Which stretched aoft athwart the azure sky
Their gnared and giant boughs. Honored OF uine'
For ages had the.e aucien; veterans
Lifted on high their Briarean arms
To battle with the storm. Rising to heaven
With tall and dusky trunks colossal growth
OF centuries unnumbered, they appeared
Like raassy ebon columns pillaring
A dome of cleaning sapphire.
Above. arouud-sublimest silence reigned
The woods wild tenants now hushed and
Nor bowling wolf, nor harsh complaining OWL
Disturbed the Silly grandeur of the night.
Here, in the depth of the prmevo forest,
Age after age had holy Nature slept
Here had her slumbers never been invaded
By the harsh dscord Of the sounding axe:
Nor here had Mans rash footstep ever come
To mar the sweet, serene nono,ony
OF solitude.
Anon the glare of fire
Burst on my vision. In the very heart
OF this dense wilderness, storms and decay
The lighmiug's wrath, and Natures own decline
Had feed the stateliest of the forest oaks,
Forming wide arena wherein bazed
Reared in its centre, a tail, ligneous pile,
Euwrapped in flames, which fercely rose aloit
In crebrous spires, like some fre,iashioned temple
Cleaning amid the shades of Erebus,
And consecrate TO orgies of the Fiends.
Brigh, glowed the flames within those ancient woods
They cured in ,winng folds-they dart0d forth
Their forked tongues-they licked the ombien, air
They glared in urid wrath upon the scene.
And such scene
Above, thick clouds Oh smoke
Roll their dense, pi,chy volumes up TO heaven
And many dancing torch, by strange forms borne,
To Ugh; them on their way, is seen below,
Rending the darkness in its onward course:
Red lightning, leaping from its dark abode,
CLOVIS with such spendor the irowuing clouds
Fixed ON the SUNNI, of the blazing pile
In rudy grandeur Ind the rocking flames
Graded dusky cadren stood revealed,
Of massy iron cumbersome and vast,
Within whose womb some iiend compounded liquid
See,hed. Missed and bubbled DER the cracking fire
There, in that solemn pace-romantic vision =
Moving majestic DER the smooth shorn soil
II II. rt,.,oJ l,,.N hand
Were forms of beauty-young and sylphlike forms
Whose silvery voices, falling softly clear
On the mild winged breezes of the midnight
Walked the rcsoundins echoes of the woods
With soulembraciug music. There stood,
Mingled in converse with these gentle ones,
Shapes OF another mould, andpodes
Fiends of the neither world, grim.visnged, fearful,
In sable gusc sterns Molochs grisy train
OF warrior demons hot from Tartarus,
The blessed angels tempting rebel,
Yet did they seem all lovely in the eyes
OF tn innocent ones whom, by their art internal,
They sought TO rum.
AS I'gazed, me seemed.
These spirits ourst forth from the cauIron took
Food, and with skIfu cunning proAereiit
Unto their lovely victims; they, enrauced,
To the sweet fascination yielding ate.
Thus did the serpent tempt the ancient Eve,
And thug she yielded ate the fruit, and fell
Then rung throughout that wood hollow laugh
OF 6endish JOY. Followed confusion dire;
And mid the horrible, unearhly din
Hoarse excavations rent the midnight air
With shrieks commingled-shrek of agony
Shook the cleft sky with believing thunders flames
Through azure ether rushing down, involved
The quirering trees in a wide-ranging sea
OF confagrOtion groups of hideeus fiends
Thronged their huge branches, reveling in glee
Demoniac; for they bad there prevailed
Against the purity of uns,aned Virtue
And prided in such victory l, seemed
AS if Hells darkling sable.banuerea hos,
Had batiled with the might Of God. and conquered
Gorsing their haze on innocence DESTROYED.
One final shout of mad exul,ing triumph
Burs, from tn internal conclave darkness then
Unfured her dusk mpenetrabie veil.
And closed upon the horrors OF the scene.
The dream was gone, but to that mystic vision
Long hours of wakeful meditation gave
Fit application. Mark the worldly man
He who with fell. deliberate in,en,
Sulies the spo,less from, of innocency,
Planning seduction of the good and fair,
Perfection's counterfeit, he yet doth see
The coinage Of pure nobility;
Without, the stamp all genuine and true
Within, the metal spurious and base;
Bland in his manners, easy of address,
Nice ard punc'ilious. exqaisiteiy graceful
.,,a-, ~. ~, avar,. rr.arad ,.or3
Elaborate of care; profoundly yersed
In those fue cunning subdl,es OF language
Seeming sincerities, which win tho love