A wilderness of weird, fantastic shapes,
Of precipice and stern declivity;
Of dizzy heights, and towering minarets;
Colossal columns and basaltic spires
Which pointing heavenward, appeared to wave
In benediction o’er the depths beneath.

Uneven crags and cliffs of various form;
Abysmal depths, and dire profundities;
Chasms so deep and awful that the eye
Of soaring eagle dare not gaze below,
Lest, dizzied, he should lose his aerial poise,
And headlong falling, reach the gulf beneath.

Majestic turrets, and the stately dome
Which, ovaled by the slow but tireless hand
Of eons of disintegrating time,
Still with impressive aspect rears its brow
Defiant of mutation and decay.

[Illustration:  “Majestic turrets and the stately dome.”

Mountain view, San Juan, Colorado.]

The crevice deep and inaccessible;
Fissure and rent, where the intrusive dike’s
Creative and destructive agency
Leaves many an enduring monument
Of metamorphic and eruptive power;
Of molten deluge, and volcanic flood;
Fracture and break, the silent stories tell
Of dire convulsion in the ages past;
Of subterranean catastrophe,
And cataclysm of internal force.

The trachyte wall, beseamed and battle scarred;
The porphyritic tower and citadel;
The granite ramparts and embattlements
Of nature’s fort, impregnable and wild,
Stand as a symbol of eternal strength,
And hurl a challenge to the elements!

Canons of startling and appalling depths,
With caverns, vast and gloomy, which would seem
Meet for the haunt of centaur or of gnome;
The gorgon and the labyrinthodon;
The clumsy mammoth and the dinosaur;
Or all gigantic and unwieldy shapes
Which earth has seen in the mysterious past,
Would seem in more accord and harmony
With such surroundings than the puny form
Of insignificant, conceited man.

And interspersed amid these solemn peaks
Lie many a pleasant vale and grassy slope,
Besprinkled with the drooping columbine,
And fragrant growths of all harmonious tints,
Whose variegated colors punctuate
Grandeur with beauty, and fearless, bloom
In the forbidding shadow of the cliffs,
And to the margin of the snowy combs
Which still resist the sun’s persuasive ray.

A lakelet, cool, pellucid and serene,
Fed by the drippings from eternal snows,
Lies like a mirror ’neath a frowning cliff,
Or as a gem, majestically ensconced
In diadem of crag and pinnacle.

Down towards the distant valley’s sultry clime,
Both solitary, and in straggling groups;
In solid phalanx, rigid and compact;
In labyrinth of branches interspread,
Impervious to the rain and midday sun;
In form spontaneous, without regard
To law of uniformity, there stand
In silent awe, or whispering to the breeze,
The sombre fir and melancholy pine. 
And many a denuded avenue
Of varying and considerable width,
Cut through the growth of balsam, spruce and pine,
Which stands erect and proud on either hand,
Attests the swift and desolating force
Of fearful, devastating avalanche.