Yosemite
With humbled heart, subdued and awed I look on thee,
Thou time-defying granite pile; with senses rapt
Behold thee, grand and world-renowned—Yosemite—
Thy spray-enwreathing stream—
Thy rock-walled vale and sunset clouds, all glory capped
With evanescent gleam.
Aye, gaze and wondering gaze, until the centuries swing
Their massive doors ajar, and glimpses give when Earth was young;
But farthest grasp of human thought but weakling reasons bring
To solve thy problem vast;
In vain the Present asks the voiceless silences that hung
Their mysteries o’er the Past—
The far, dim Past, that wrapped our sphere in shoreless sea—
The mantling gloom, that swathed its infancy in mist,
While yet our central orb did wait Omnipotent decree
To bless the world with Light—
Ere Day’s first, smiling morn with rosy beams had kissed
Away the brooding night.
What engine wrought in Nature’s great completing plan
To ope for thee thy chasm’s broad, abysmal deeps?
Was it the glacier’s ponderous plow, that smoothed for man
The verdant, fertile plain,
Or, rolling waters that thro’ circling eons, wore thy steeps
With solemn, sad refrain?—
Or from Earth’s central fires, did fierce, volcanic throes
Expel, in molten mass, the elemental rock,
That o’er the wilds to mountain majesty arose,
And while yet warm with throbbing strain,
Did earthquake rend with pole-disturbing shock,
Thy mighty walls amain?
O, puny mind! be still and catch the chant sublime,
Of Nature’s psalm, that here is poured in never ending praise;
Accept the truth that God, by His right hand, did raise
These templed rocks, to stand thro’ an eternity of time,
An altar place of worship, where
All nations come, and every heart an offering lays
Of mingled praise and prayer.