>By William Cullen Bryant
Thou goest forth, companion of the storm,
Beneath whose mingling screams and hollow moans,
The mountain oaks shrink like the frighted deer;
Thou goest forth, where full upon thy soul,
May the deep Genius of the mighty waste
Speak in the whirlwind's roar and thunder's roll,
And teach thee through the labyrinth to tread
Of nature's wild magnificence, and lead
Thy footsteps to her wildest, grandest scenes,
Her cliffs o'er beetling ocean's vexed surge,
Her lonely lakes by pathless forests girt,
Her dark aerial rocks, whose towering forms
Defy the fury of the bellowing storm.
Oh, may the deep emotions thou shalt feel
Amid those scenes of vastness and of power,
Be clothed with language by thy pencil's skill,
And on thy canvas glow! Then will thy name
Be link'd with those whose genius won them fame
In the bright annals of the eternal hills.
Go, then, and on the adamantine cliffs,
And on the beetling forehead of the rock,
And on the waving wings of storm and cloud,
Portray the fearful work of ages past,
The wreck of columns from their base o'erthrown,
The wasting tower, the ruin'd battlement.
Give, as thy chisel guides the flying steel,
The varied scenes that in thy soul shall live;
The glory and the terror of the storm,
The majesty, the stillness of the vale,
The ocean with its multitudinous waves.
And waft them o'er the deep, that those who dwell
Mid temples, pillars, trophies of the past,
May know that nature still is grand and fair,
And feel with thee the charm that binds thee to her side.