POETRY.

THE MOUNTAIN.

I HOLD above a careless land

The menace of the skies, And in the hollow of my hand The sleeping tempest lies ; Mine are the promise of the morn, The triumph of the day, And parting sunset's beams forlorn Upon my heights delay : There longest, loveliest rests each fleeting, fading ra7.

Many a little blue-eyed lake Around my footstool sleeps; Above a thousand torrents break From purple-shadowed steeps, And foaming down my rugged side, With shouts of baby glee, They hurry to you scarce-descried, Far-off, faint-calling sea, And mix their tiny rills with its immensity.

But, oh ! the beauty of the night The silver silent hills !

When billowy vapour, ghostly-white, The nearer valley fills ; And rising from that grey lagoon Each bare and flinty spire Lifts its wan forehead to the moon, That with a like desire

Kisses that pallid brow and crowns with fairy fire.

The mountain, goats securely leap About my perilous ways ; There sometimes a bewildered sheep From safer pasture strays, Whom faint from devious wanderings The questing raven spies, And blinds her with a whirr of wings, And frights with savage cries, Till in some lost ravine the unhappy truant lies.

Yea, awful is my giant form

When midnight winds awake, And 'neath the chariot of the storm

The darkened ridges shake,—

They shake, they bow before his wrath, The trembling forest bends, The rocks are cloven in his path, The eternal granite rends, And through the rift it made the thunderbolt descends.

With rush of blinding showers that sweep The stars out of the sky, With spirit voices chanting deep, The heavy night goes by ; Till glad as he who wakes at last From demon-haunted dreams, When all those clamorous hours have passed, The joyous morning beams, And from my swollen falls a living rainbow gleams.

In chattering swarms the starlings crowd ; The eagle is alone.

Remote I dwell behind the cloud That veils my rocky throne : Thence, while the circling seasons fleet On swift and silent wing, I watch unwearied earth repeat The miracle of spring, And o'er my barren slopes a flowery mantle fling.

And they that from your towns are led To seek my solitude, Their souls by angel bands are fed, And with immortal food; For though my chaste, unbruised breasts Nor wine nor honey yield, Yet whoso in their shadow rests With eyes and heart unsealed, To him my tale is told, my secret charm revealed.

EDWARD SYDNEY TYLEE.