Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1856-09-18
Selett 8taoil|g.
From the Examiner.
MOUNTAIN nIUsINGs.-NO. I.

DYJ. WOOD DAVIDSON.
Thoughts on Cnsar's Head.
stood upon the mountains brow slone-
An exile from the irksome solitude
Of Company-a pilgrim to that fame ..
Where worship gushes like mountain stream,
And meditation mounts aoft like prayer
A devotee flushed with devotion's glow
refugee, ye wilds mid ye at homo
A lover, maiden Nature, in thine arms
stood upon the mountains brow at dawn,
To greet in dewy glimpse the differing heights
That sentinel around this sovereign peak,
Which rrars DER all its royal Roman head
So proud, so stern in look and naughty, rears
His brow, that seems to look, without smile,
Without frown, orlove, or hate, or hope;
And so has gazed for untold centuries
Upon that concave waste, that plain which sweeps
Out from its base below-the DIsNAL's Wild
And so he gazed, and ages yet will gaze.
In profile Roman, Fancy felt its power.
The laurel on its brow, by Nature twined.
Suggested him who never "looked along
The land he made not Romc's" and classic taste
Has named it C.EsAn's HEAD.
stood at dawn
And marked the rising day, as gush by gush
VI light revealed yet more western height
As gush by gush like pulsngs came the morn;
Till sunlight crept in silence on, rs if
Afraid to wake these slumbering hills yet came
From height to height o'erglancng on; but first
The highest ever So are hopes in youth;
The least earth-near are lighted first and then
The level aims of soberer life receive
later thought. These day. beams lift from out
Each lowly cove itsvapory veil, and each
In patent ruggedness appears; like things
Or common life r,veaed-to common sight.
Yet wales have warmer hours by day than high
And naughty sleeps; SO love reposes less
Amid the towering strife, and less illu,nes,
They say, the prouder points of human life.
How like our hopes are mountains thus how like
The realilife, the homeier vales See, hopes
In earliest years arc lit which prove but rocks
AS verdureless as high. Again, in life's
Decline, the fading facts are witnessed still
BY these-by hopes-and these alone are lit
While life recedes. And like our hopes, away,
The farther mountains still o'ertop the near,
And lose themselves in one true, highest, last,
Earth-resting peak; but yet above them all
O'erhoats q cloudlet like n mountain blue,
The dearest of them all IT'S one that noon
In clustering pomp will bring upon the breeze
To wrap in storm these real heights around,
And burst in devastating thunders here.
The dearest-highest-ai we know, becomes,
When dashed by Deity oerimportuncd,
Evn at our feet, the desolating cause
Of life's completest woe. Pve knelt me thus,
In wildering anguish of intense desire,
To the night-wandering wnds-for darkness bows
As naught beside the wounded soul in dust
I've poured to them the burning prayer that heaven
Had spurned, and in the mad idolatry
Pledged life and soul and every hope on earth
For one. The pilgrim winds keep wildly on,
And I ,cas not undons-was saved because
The winds, like heaven, had heard my prayer IN
cold,
Contemptuous disregard.
stood upon
The mountains brow at eve and saw the day
Depart. The eastern slopes whereon the morn
Had poured its dewiest gush now soonest dim,
Deserted by those rays. On-on-aslant
1t sinks, as mount by mount in shades recedes
The highest lighted last, while all around
Is dark, and dim, and calm as some high hope
Late fingers with US still in life's decline
The highest earth can bear. And later yet,
When that is dim, the cloudlets catch the blush
That flies to heaven, and would retain the glare
Like phantoms in fever-dream, too late
For fact, unreal and delusive shapes;
Like truths that glmmer cross the vale of Death.
So varied were the feelings-such the vein
In which gazed upon that scene and saw
The princely sun draw near his rest in mute
Magnifcence-in stately silence seek
His lone repose. turned, and oil was dusk;
And breathed prayer that suns of human hope
Might never set, and human hearts and lives
Be darkened never-never, if forever
WINNsBoRo', S. C.