. The White hills; their legends, landscape, and poetry. ing the richnessand complexity of color out of the account. And then the general aspect of these mountains during this proud and secure ! What weight and what spirit! They arenot dead matter,—they live. So solid, yet soaring ! They seem tolift themselves to that glorious height. When we gain the summitof Randolph Hill, and ride to the edge where it slants down to , we stand where we can put our hand upon the mane of a moun-tain without reaching so far as Byron was obliged to in his poem, THE ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 253 when
. The White hills; their legends, landscape, and poetry. ing the richnessand complexity of color out of the account. And then the general aspect of these mountains during this proud and secure ! What weight and what spirit! They arenot dead matter,—they live. So solid, yet soaring ! They seem tolift themselves to that glorious height. When we gain the summitof Randolph Hill, and ride to the edge where it slants down to , we stand where we can put our hand upon the mane of a moun-tain without reaching so far as Byron was obliged to in his poem, THE ANDROSCOGGIN VALLEY. 253 when he laid his hand upon the mane of the sea,—for he stood infancy on the Alban Mount, some miles away from the ocean, whenhe stretched out his arm to touch it thus. Here we see the north-eastern wall of the White Mountain chain dechning sharply to thevalley. From Randolph Hill we look down to the lowest course ofits masonry, and up to the two noblest spires of rock which the ridgesupports. How lonely and desolate it looks, aloft there ! And yet ^. those pinnacles, that ai e scarcely fannedby a breath of sununer, and that fecisuch storms as the valleys never knowand could not bear,—is it not whole-some to look at them and think what they undergo for the good ofNew England ? Must we not summon Emersons lines, that standat the portal of his stirring pages on Heroism, to express the feelingwhich these granite types of Puritan pith and sturdiness awaken,when we look up to their storm-scarred brows ? Ruby wine is drunk by knavesSugar spends to fatten slaves35 254 THE WHITE HILLS. Rose and vine leaf deck buffoons;Thunder-clouds are Joves festoons,Drooping oft, in wreaths of round his head;The hero is not fed on his own heart he eats;Chambers of the great are jails,And head-winds right for royal sails. It seems, however, to be true that no mountain is a hero to itsvallej, although the proverb maj be false in regard to men. Many,no doubt, wil
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, booksubjectwhitemo, bookyear1876
