Thou gray old cliff, like turret raised on high, <br />With light-house mingling with the summer sky, <br />How long in lonely grandeur hast thou stood, <br />Braving alike the wild winds and the flood? <br />What howling gales have swept those shores along, <br />What tempests dire have piped their dismal song. <br />And lightnings glared those towering trees among? <br /> <br />And oft, as now, the summer sun has shed <br />His golden glories round thy mountain head, <br />And tarried there with late and lingering hues, <br />While all below was steeped in twilight dews, <br />And night's proud queen, in ages past, as now, <br />Hung her pale crescent o'er thy beetling brow. <br />Soft lamp-that lights the happy to their rest, <br />But wakes fresh anguish in the hapless breast, <br />And calls it forth a restless ghost, to glide <br />In lonely sadness up the mountain side; <br />And couldst not thou, oh! giant of the past, <br />Some far off knowledge o'er my senses cast, <br />Sigh in the hollow moanings of the gale, <br />And of past ages tell mysterious tale- <br />Speak of those ages of primeval worth, <br />And all the hidden wonders of thy birth- <br />Convulsions strange that heaved thy mighty breast, <br />And raised the stately masses of thy crest? <br /> <br />Perchance the Indian climbed thy rugged side, <br />Ere the pale face subdued his warlike pride, <br />And bent him down to kneel, to serve, to toil, <br />To alien shrines upon his native soil. <br />It needs not thee, O mount! to tell the story <br />That stained the wreath of many a hero's glory; <br />But Nature's mysteries must ever rest <br />Within the gloomy confines of thy breast, <br />Where wealth, uncounted, hapless lies concealed, <br />Locked in thine inmost temple unrevealed.<br /><br />Charles Evans<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/written-on-viewing-turkey-point-from-a-distance/
