SLEEPY HOLLOW.
Beneath these gold and azure skies
The river winds through leafy glades,
Save where, like battlements, arise
The gray and tufted Palisades.
The fervor of this sultry time
Is tempered by the humid earth,
And zephyrs, born of summer’s prime,
Give a delicious coolness birth.
They freshen this sequestered nook
With constant greetings bland and free,
The pages of the open book
All flutter with their wayward glee.
As quicker swell their breathings soft,
Cloud-shadows skim along the field;
And yonder dangling woodbines oft
Their crimson bugles gently yield.
The tulip-tree majestic stirs
Far down the water’s marge beside,
And now awake the nearer firs,
And toss their ample branches wide.
How blithely trails the pendent vine!
The grain-slope lies in green repose;
Through the dark foliage of the pine
And lofty elms the sunshine glows.
Like sentinels in firm array
The trees-of-life their shafts uprear;
Red cones upon the sumach play,
And ancient locusts whisper near.
From wave and meadow, cliff and sky,
Let thy stray vision homeward fall;
Behold the mist-bloom floating nigh,
And hollyhock white-edged and tall;
Its gaudy leaves, though fanned apart,
Round thick and mealy stamens spring,
And nestled to its crimson heart
The sated bees enamored cling.
Mark the broad terrace flecked with light
That peeps through trellises of rose,
And quivers with a vague delight
As each pale shadow comes and goes.
The near, low gurgle of the brook,
The wren’s glad chirp, the scented hay,
And e’en the watch-dog’s peaceful look
Our vain disquietudes allay.
. . . . . . . . .
Henry Theodore Tuckerman.
VIEW FROM FORT PUTNAM, HUDSON RIVER.
THIS fort—which commands the military position of West Point, and which was considered so important during the Revolutionary war—is now in ruins, but is visited by all travellers in this region for the superb view which it affords of the sublime pass of the Highlands. This was the great key which Arnold’s treachery intended to give into the hands of the English; and associated with the memory of the unfortunate André, and with other painful events of the conspiracy, it possesses an interest which is wanting to other objects of the same description in our country.
Washington’s visit of inspection to Fort Putnam and the other redoubts on this side the river was made only two or three hours before his discovery of the treason of Arnold, at that moment, as he supposed, in command at West Point. The commander-in-chief was expected to arrive the evening before; and had he done so, Arnold would probably never have escaped. Having accidentally met the French minister, M. de Lucerne, at Fishkill, however (eight miles above), he was induced to pass the night there for the purpose of some conference, and set off early in the morning on horseback, sending on a messenger to Mrs. Arnold that himself and suite would be with her to breakfast. Arriving opposite West Point, near a small redoubt called Fort Constitution, Washington turned his horse from the road. Lafayette, who was then in his suite, called out, “General, you are going in the wrong direction; you know Mrs. Arnold is waiting breakfast for us.” “Ah,” answered Washington, “I know you young men are all in love with Mrs. Arnold, and wish to get where she is as soon as possible. Go and take your breakfast with her, and tell her not to wait for me; I must ride down and examine the redoubts on this side the river.” Two of the aides rode on, found breakfast waiting, and sat down at once with General Arnold and his family. While they were at table a messenger came in with a letter for Arnold, which announced the capture of André, and the failure and betrayal, of course, of the whole conspiracy. Showing little or no emotion, though his life hung upon a thread, he merely said to one of his aides that his presence was required at West Point; and leaving word for General Washington that he was called over the river, but would return immediately, he ordered a horse and sent for Mrs. Arnold to her chamber. He then informed her abruptly that they must part, possibly forever, and that his life depended on his reaching the enemy’s lines without delay. Struck with horror at this intelligence, she swooned and fell senseless. In that state he left her, hurried downstairs, mounted a horse belonging to one of his aides that stood saddled at the door, and rode with all speed to the bank of the river. A boat with six men was in waiting; and pretending that he was going with a flag of truce, he pulled down the stream, and arrived safe on board the “Vulture” sloop of war, lying some miles below.
Meantime Washington, having finished his inspection of the redoubt, arrived at Arnold’s house, received his message, and concluded to cross immediately and meet Arnold at West Point. As the whole party were seated in the barge moving smoothly over the water, with the majestic scenery of the Highlands about them, Washington said, “Well, gentlemen, I am glad, on the whole, that General Arnold has gone before us, for we shall now have a salute; and the roaring of the cannon will have a fine effect among these mountains.” The boat drew near to the beach, but no cannon were heard, and there was no appearance of preparation to receive them. “What!” said Washington, “do they not intend to salute us?” At this moment an officer was seen making his way down the hill to meet them, who seemed confused at their arrival, and apologized for not being prepared to receive such distinguished visitors. “How is this, sir,” said Washington, “is not General Arnold here?” “No, sir,” replied the officer, “he has not been here these two days; nor have I heard from him within that time.” “This is extraordinary,” said Washington; “we were told that he had crossed the river, and that we should find him here. However, our visit must not be in vain. Since we have come, we must look round a little, and see in what state things are with you.” He then ascended the hill, examined Fort Putnam and the other fortifications, and returned to Arnold’s house, where the fact of the treason was at once revealed. This had occupied two or three hours, however, and Arnold was beyond pursuit. Washington retained his usual calmness, though Arnold was one of his favorite officers, and had been placed at West Point by his own personal influence with Congress. He called Lafayette and Knox, showed them the proofs, and only said to the former, “Whom can we trust now?”
WYOMING.
Thou com’st in beauty on my gaze at last,
“On Susquehanna’s side, fair Wyoming!”
Image of many a dream in hours long past,
When life was in its bud and blossoming,
And waters, gushing from the fountain spring
Of pure enthusiast thought, dimmed my young eyes,
As by the poet borne on unseen wing,
I breathed in fancy ‘neath thy cloudless skies
The summer’s air, and heard her echoed harmonies.
I then but dreamed: thou art before me now
In life, a vision of the brain no more.
I’ve stood upon the wooded mountain’s brow
That beetles high thy lovely valley o’er;
And now, where winds thy river’s greenest shore,
Within a bower of sycamores am laid;
And winds as soft and sweet as ever bore
The fragrance of wild-flowers through sun and shade
Are singing in the trees, whose low boughs press my head.
Nature hath made thee lovelier than the power
Even of Campbell’s pen hath pictured: he
Had woven, had he gazed one sunny hour
Upon thy smiling vale, its scenery
With more of truth, and made each rock and tree
Known like old friends, and greeted from afar:
And there are tales of sad reality
In the dark legends of thy border war,
With woes of deeper tint than his own Gertrude’s are.
But where are they, the beings of the mind,
The bard’s creations, moulded not of clay,
Hearts to strange bliss and suffering assigned,—
Young Gertrude, Albert, Waldegrave,—where are they?
We need not ask. The people of to-day
Appear good, honest, quiet men enough,
And hospitable too,—for ready pay;
With manners like their roads, a little rough,
And hands whose grasp is warm and welcoming, though tough.
. . . . . . . . .
There is a woman, widowed, gray, and old,
Who tells you where the foot of Battle stepped
Upon their day of massacre. She told
Its tale, and pointed to the spot, and wept,
Whereon her father and five brothers slept
Shroudless, the bright-dreamed slumbers of the brave,
When all the land a funeral mourning kept.
And there wild laurels, planted on the grave
By Nature’s hand, in air their pale red blossoms wave.
And on the margin of yon orchard hill
Are marks where time-worn battlements have been,
And in the tall grass traces linger still
Of “arrowy frieze and wedged ravelin.”
Five hundred of her brave that valley green
Trod on the morn in soldier-spirit gay;
But twenty lived to tell the noonday scene,—
And where are now the twenty? Passed away.
Has Death no triumph-hours, save on the battle-day?
Fitz-Greene Halleck.
CROW-NEST, FROM BULL HILL, WEST POINT.
IT is true of the Hudson, as of all other rivers, that to be seen to advantage it should form the middle, not the foreground, of the picture. Those who go to Albany by steam have something the same idea of the scenery of West Point that an inside passenger may have of the effect of a stage-coach at top-speed. It is astonishing how much foreground goes for in landscape; and there are few passes of scenery where it is more naturally beautiful than those of the Hudson. In the accompanying drawing, the picturesque neighborhood of Undercliff, the seat of General Morris, lies between the river and the artist, and directly opposite stands the peak of Crow Nest, mentioned in the description of West Point.
Crow Nest is one of the most beautiful mountains of America for shape, verdure, and position; and when the water is unruffled, and the moon sits on his summit, he looks like a monarch crowned with a single pearl. This is the scene of the first piece-work of fancy which has come from the practical brain of America,—the poem of “The Culprit Fay.” The opening is so descriptive of the spot that it is quite in place here; and to those who have not seen the poem (as most European readers have not) it will convey an idea of a production which, in my opinion, treads close on the heels of the “Midsummer Night’s Dream:”—
’Tis the middle watch of a summer’s night,—
The earth is dark, but the heavens are bright;
Nought is seen in the vault on high
But the moon and the stars and the cloudless sky,
And the flood which rolls its milky hue,—
A river of light on the welkin blue.
The moon looks down on old Crow Nest,
She mellows the shades on his shaggy breast,
And seems his huge gray form to throw
In a silver cone on the wave below;
His sides are broken by spots of shade
By the walnut boughs and the cedar made,
And through their clustering branches dark
Glimmers and dies the firefly’s spark,—
Like starry twinkles that momently break
Through the rifts of the gathering tempest rack.
The stars are on the moving stream,
And fling, as its ripples gently flow,
A burnish’d length of wavy beam
In an eel-like, spiral line below.
The winds are whist, and the owl is still,
The bat in the shelvy rock is hid;
And nought is heard on the lonely hill
But the cricket’s chirp and the answer shrill
Of the gauze-winged katy-did,
And the plaints of the mourning whip-poor-will,
Who mourns unseen, and ceaseless sings
Ever a note of wail and wo,
Till morning spreads her rosy wings,
And earth and sky in her glances glow.
’Tis the hour of fairy ban and spell:
The wood-tick has kept the minutes well;
He has counted them all with click and stroke
Deep in the heart of the mountain-oak;
And he has awakened the sentry-elve
Who sleeps with him in the haunted tree,
To bid him ring the hour of twelve,
And call the fays to their revelry.
. . . . . . . . .
They come from beds of lichen green,
They creep from the mullen’s velvet screen;
Some on the backs of beetles fly
From the silver tops of moon-touch’d trees,
Where they swing in their cob-web hammocks high,
And rock’d about in the evening breeze;
Some from the hum-bird’s downy nest,—
They had driven him out by elfin power,
And pillow’d on plumes of his rainbow breast
Had slumber’d there till the charmed hour;
Some had lain in a scarp of the rock,
With glittering rising-stars inlaid,
And some had open’d the four-o’clock,
And stolen within its purple shade.
And now they throng the moonlight glade,
Above—below—on every side,
Their little minion forms arrayed
In the tricksy pomp of fairy pride.
The general assembly of the fairies is at last complete, and they proceed to the trial of the culprit fay, who has extinguished his elfin lamp and paralyzed his wings by a love for a mortal maid. He is condemned to penances, which are most exquisitely described, and constitute the greater part of the poem; and he finally expiates his sins, and is forgiven. There is a fineness of description, and a knowledge of the peculiarities of American nature, in birds, fishes, flowers, and the phenomena of this particular region, which constitute this little poem a book of valuable information as well as an exquisite work of fancy.
Just under Crow Nest, buried in the heavy leaves of a ravine, springs a waterfall like a naiad from the depths of the forest, and plunges down into the river. The rambles in and about its neighborhood are cool and retired; and it is a favorite place for lovers from New York, who run up in the steamer in three hours, and find the honeymoon goes swimmingly off there,—the excellent hotel within half a mile supplying the real, without which the ideal is found to be very trumpery. The marble tomb of a cadet, who was killed by the bursting of a gun, forms a picturesque object, and gives a story to the spot.
HORICON.
In the midst of the mountains all bosky and wooded,
Its bosom thick-gemmed with the loveliest isles,
Its borders with vistas of Paradise studded,—
Looking up to the heaven sweet Horicon smiles.
Thick set are its haunts with old legend and story,
That, woven by genius, still cluster and blend;
But its beauty will cling, like a halo of glory,
When legend and record with ages shall end.
. . . . . . . . .
Far down in the waters the pebbles are gleaming,—
Far down in the clear waves that nothing can hide;
So, beauty of youth, comes the name you are dreaming,—
Too pure for concealment, too gentle for pride;
So smiles on your faces the sunshine of heaven,—
The blessing distilled in the gardens of air,—
A smile of contentment from Paradise given
That woman and lake have been fashioned so fair.
Pure Horicon! glassing the brows of the mountains,
As handmaid might bend to a conqueror’s will,
Although nurtured and swelled by the commonest fountains
Yet pure and transparent and beautiful still!
No wonder the men of the cross and the missal
Once named it “The Lake of the Sacrament” pure,
Or that far leagues away, from some holiest vessel,
Its drops on the forehead could comfort and cure.
On the fair silver lake drives the Indian no longer,
With the sweep of his paddle, the birchen canoe;
And the fortresses fall that made weakness the stronger,
And saved the white maid when the war-whistle blew.
But ’tis well that the old and the savage are fated,
And that danger rolls back from the Edens of earth;
Our boats glide as well with all loveliness freighted,
And the war-whoop we lose in the sallies of mirth.
Pure Horicon! lake of the cloud and the shadow!
Soft shimmer your moonlight and dimple your rain!
And the hearts far away—if by seaside or meadow—
Still think of your blue with a lingering pain!
Among the far islands that glitter in heaven,—
On the dim, undiscovered, and beautiful shore,—
Some glimpse of a lovelier sea may be given
To the eyes of the perfect,—but never before!
Henry Morford.
THE CATTERSKILL FALLS.
(From Below.)
THE CATTERSKILL FALLS.
FROM the precipice whence our first view of this Fall is taken, the descent is steep and slippery to the very brink of the torrent, which it is necessary to cross on the wild blocks that lie scattered in its rocky bed. From thence, literally buried in forest foliage, the tourist will enjoy a very different, but perhaps more striking and picturesque, view than the other. The stream, at a vast height above him, is seen leaping from ledge to ledge,—sometimes lost, sometimes sparkling in sunshine, till it courses impetuously beneath the rock on which he is seated, and is lost in the deep unbroken obscurity of the forest. The rocky ledges above, worn by time, have the appearance of deep caverns, and beautifully relieve the fall of the light and silvery stream. In the winter, the vast icicles which are suspended from the ledges of rock, and shine like pillars against the deep obscurity of the caverns behind, afford a most romantic spectacle, one which has afforded a subject to Bryant for one of the most imaginative of his poems.
THE WRECK OF THE ANCIENT COASTER.
Her side is in the water,
Her keel is in the sand,
And her bowsprit rest on the low gray rock
That bounds the sea and land.
Her deck is without a mast,
And sand and shells are there,
And the teeth of decay are gnawing her planks
In the sun and the sultry air.
No more on the river’s bosom,
When sky and wave are calm,
And the clouds are in summer quietness,
And the cool night-breath is balm,
Will she glide in the swan-like stillness
Of the moon in the blue above,—
A messenger from other lands,
A beacon to hope and love.
No more in the midnight tempest
Will she mock the mounting sea,
Strong in her oaken timbers,
And her white sail’s bravery.
She hath borne, in days departed,
Warm hearts upon her deck;
Those hearts, like her, are mouldering now,
The victims and the wreck
Of time, whose touch erases
Each vestige of all we love;
The wanderers, home returning,
Who gazed that deck above,
And they who stood to welcome
Their loved ones on that shore,
Are gone,—and the place that knew them
Shall know them nevermore.
. . . . . . . . .
Fitz-Greene Halleck.
HUDSON RIVER.
Rivers that roll most musical in song
Are often lovely to the mind alone;
The wanderer muses, as he moves along
Their barren banks, on glories not their own.
When, to give substance to his boyish dreams,
He leaves his own, far countries to survey,
Oft must he think, in greeting foreign streams,
“Their names alone are beautiful, not they.”
If chance he mark the dwindled Arno pour
A tide more meagre than his native Charles;
Or views the Rhone when summer’s heat is o’er,
Subdued and stagnant in the fen of Arles;
Or when he sees the slimy Tiber fling
His sullen tribute at the feet of Rome,—
Oft to his thought must partial memory bring
More noble waves, without renown, at home.
Now let him climb the Catskill, to behold
The lordly Hudson, marching to the main,
And say what bard, in any land of old,
Had such a river to inspire his strain!
Along the Rhine gray battlements and towers
Declare what robbers once the realm possessed;
But here Heaven’s handiwork surpasseth ours,
And man has hardly more than built his nest.
No storied castle overawes these heights,
Nor antique arches check the current’s play,
Nor mouldering architrave the mind invites
To dream of deities long passed away.
No Gothic buttress, or decaying shaft
Of marble, yellowed by a thousand years,
Lifts a great land-mark to the little craft,—
A summer cloud! that comes and disappears.
But cliffs, unaltered from their primal form
Since the subsiding of the deluge, rise
And hold their savins to the upper storm,
While far below the skiff securely plies.
Farms, rich not more in meadows than in men
Of Saxon mould, and strong for every toil,
Spread o’er the plain or scatter through the glen
Bœotian plenty on a Spartan soil.
Then, where the reign of cultivation ends,
Again the charming wilderness begins;
From steep to steep one solemn wood extends,
Till some new hamlet’s rise the boscage thins.
And these deep groves forever have remained
Touched by no axe, by no proud owner nursed;
As now they stand they stood when Pharaoh reigned,
Lineal descendants of creation’s first.
. . . . . . . . .
No tales we know are chronicled of thee
In ancient scrolls; no deeds of doubtful claim
Have hung a history on every tree,
And given each rock its fable and a fame.
But neither here hath any conqueror trod,
Nor grim invaders from barbarian climes;
No horrors feigned of giant or of god
Pollute thy stillness with recorded crimes.
Here never yet have happy fields laid waste,
The ravished harvest and the blasted fruit,
The cottage ruined and the shrine defaced,
Tracked the foul passage of the feudal brute.
“Yet, O Antiquity!” the stranger sighs,
“Scenes wanting thee soon pall upon the view;
The soul’s indifference dulls the sated eyes,
Where all is fair indeed,—but all is new.”
False thought! Is age to crumbling walls confined?
To Grecian fragments and Egyptian bones?
Hath Time no monuments to raise the mind,
More than old fortresses and sculptured stones?
Call not this new which is the only land
That wears unchanged the same primeval face
Which, when just dawning from its Maker’s hand,
Gladdened the first great grandsire of our race.
Nor did Euphrates with an earlier birth
Glide past green Eden towards the unknown south,
Than Hudson broke upon the infant earth,
And kissed the ocean with his nameless mouth.
Twin-born with Jordan, Ganges, and the Nile!
Thebes and the pyramids to thee are young!
Oh, had thy waters burst from Britain’s isle,
Till now perchance they had not flowed unsung.
Thomas William Parsons.
UNDERCLIFF, NEAR COLD-SPRING.
(The seat of the late General Morris.)
THE pen of the poet and the pencil of the artist have so frequently united to record the grandeur and sublimity of the Hudson, and with such graphic fidelity, that little of interest remains unsaid or unsketched. But when every point of its bold and beautiful scenery might be made the subject of a picture, and every incident of its past history the theme of a poem, it requires no great research to discover new and prominent objects of attraction. Perhaps there is no portion of this beautiful river which partakes more of the picturesque, or combines more of the wild and wonderful, than the vicinity of the present view; and when time shall touch the history of the present with the wand of tradition, and past events shall live in the memory of the future as legends, romance will never revel in a more bewitching region. Fiction shall then fling its imaginative veil over the things we have seen, covering but not concealing them, and in the plentitude of poetic genius people the drama of futurity with a thousand exquisite creations, clothed in the venerated garb of antiquity.
Undercliff, the mansion of the late General George P. Morris, which forms the principal object in the engraving, is situated upon an elevated plateau, rising from the eastern shore of the river; and the selection of such a commanding and beautiful position at once decides the taste of its intellectual proprietor. In the rear of the villa, cultivation has placed her fruit and forest trees with a profuse hand, and fertilized the fields with a variety of vegetable products. The extent of the grounds is abruptly terminated by the base of a rocky mountain, that rises nearly perpendicular to its summit, and affords in winter a secure shelter from the bleak blasts of the north. In front, a circle of greensward is refreshed by a fountain in the centre, gushing from a Grecian vase, and encircled by ornamental shrubbery; from thence a gravelled walk winds down a gentle declivity to a second plateau, and again descends to the entrance of the carriage road, which leads upwards along the left slope of the hill through a noble forest, the growth of many years, until suddenly emerging from its sombre shades, the visitor beholds the mansion before him in the bright blaze of day. A few openings in the wood afford an opportunity to catch a glimpse of the water, sparkling with reflected light; and the immediate transition from shadow to sunshine is peculiarly pleasing.
Although the sunny prospects from the villa—of the giant mountains in their eternal verdure, the noble stream when frequent gusts ruffle its surface into a thousand waves, the cluster of white cottages collected into the distant village—are glorious, it is only by the lovely light of the moon, when Nature is in repose, that their magic influence is fully felt. We were fortunate in having an opportunity to contemplate the scene at such an hour. The moon had risen from a mass of clouds which formed a line across the sky so level that fancy saw her ascending from the dark sea, and her silvery light lay softened on the landscape; silence was over all, save where the dipping of a distant oar was echoed from the deep shadows of the rocks. Sometimes the white sail of a sloop would steal into sight from the deep gloom, like some shrouded spirit gliding from the confines of a giant’s cavern, recalling the expressive lines by Moore:—
“The stream is like a silvery lake,
And o’er its face each vessel glides
Gently, as if it feared to wake
The slumber of the silent tides.”
General Morris published some time ago a volume of lyrical effusions, called “The Deserted Bride, and other Poems.” Many of them have been written among the fairy beauties of Undercliff, and under the inspiration of that true poetic feeling which such enchanting scenes are so likely to elicit. Where so many gems of genius enrich a work, it becomes difficult to decide upon that most worthy of selection. It is not our province or intention to review the volume, but we cannot resist the inclination to make an extract, because it seems so beautiful an accessory to the subject, and must create an added interest in the engraving. Where scenes are so replete with the poetry of Nature, they are best illustrated by the poetry of numbers; but we were particularly delighted with the following lines, addressed to his young daughter. The natural simplicity of the subject is well expressed by the purity of its poetic images, and breathes the refinement of paternal affection.
IDA.
Where Hudson’s wave, o’er silvery sands,
Winds through the hills afar,
Old Cro’nest like a monarch stands,
Crowned with a single star:
And there, amid the billowy swells
Of rock-ribbed, cloud-capt earth,
My fair and gentle Ida dwells,
A nymph of mountain birth.
The snow-curl that the cliff receives,
The diamonds of the showers,
Spring’s tender blossoms, buds and leaves,
The sisterhood of flowers,—
Morn’s early beam, eve’s balmy breeze,
Her purity define;
But Ida’s dearer far than these
To this fond breast of mine.