Attempt > Volume 1 and Select writings

THE ATTEMPT
As true, as full, as pure a joy we find,
That stills as well the pleasure-craying mind,
As when ’midst God’s own works we take our stand,
And see His power displayed on every hand,—
The curtain of His glory drawn around,
Hew beauty adding to each foot of ground.
How sweet at morn, at noon, or evening still,
To stand beside thy dreamy, murmuring rill;
To watch it wimpling gaily through the glade,
With mimic torrent, eddy, and cascade;
To climb thy banks that green and rugged rise,
To seize with ardent joy the ferny prize,
The modest Spleenworts,* in the clefts that hide,
And Buchler,t wearing well its plumes of pride;
Or, ’neath thy frowning precipice of rock,
Scarr’d by the print of many a tempest’s shock,
And ever moistened by the thread-like stream,
That o’er its face descends with silver gleam,
Within the solemn twilight of the leaves
To stand, and gaze into the sky, that heaves
Its broad blue banner o’er the world of green,
And dream of days when all this glist’ning sheen
Was changed for blackest gloom and wildest storm—
When this calm rill, that mirrors back each form
Of ash and birch and slowly sailing cloud,
Rushed on with torrent dash and thunder loud—
And that cascade, that like a vapour seems,
As white and shadowy in the dusk it gleams,
Swelled high by ceaseless rains and melting snow
Roamed o’er the cliff and boiled in wrath below.
0 thou most sweet, most fair, sequester’d spot,
Though viewed but seldom, ne’er to be forgot!
On thy loved beauties shall mine eyes no more
Enchanted feast as they have done before 1
* Asplenium trichomunes and Asplenium, adiantum Nigrum. + Lustrea Felix Mas.
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