Signal Tree (Acadia)

But hush! the upland hath a sudden loss     Of quiet!--Look, adown the dusk hill-side,         A troop of Oxford hunters going home,     As in old days, jovial and talking, ride!         From hunting with the Berkshire hounds they come.             Quick! let me fly, and cross     Into yon farther field!--'Tis done; and see,         Back'd by the sunset, which doth glorify         The orange and pale violet evening-sky,     Bare on its lonely ridge, the Tree! the Tree! I take the omen! Eve lets down her veil,     The white fog creeps from bush to bush about,         The west unflushes, the high stars grow bright,     And in the scatter'd farms the lights come out.         I cannot reach the signal-tree to-night,              Yet, happy omen, hail!     Hear it from thy broad lucent Arno-vale         (For there thine earth forgetting eyelids keep         The morningless and unawakening sleep     Under the flowery oleanders pale), Hear it, O Thyrsis, still our tree is there!--     Ah, vain! These English fields, this upland dim,         These brambles pale with mist engarlanded,     That lone, sky-pointing tree, are not for him;         To a boon southern country he is fled,              And now in happier air,     Wandering with the great Mother's train divine         (And purer or more subtle soul than thee,         I trow, the mighty Mother doth not see)     Within a folding of the Apennine, -Matthew Arnold, Thyrsis: A Monody,1861

Phantasies in the Mist (Niagara)

And others came . . . Desires and Adorations,     Winged Persuasions and veil'd Destinies,     Splendours, and Glooms, and glimmering Incarnations     Of hopes and fears, and twilight Phantasies;     And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs,     And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam     Of her own dying smile instead of eyes,     Came in slow pomp; the moving pomp might seem Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream. -Percy Bysshe Shelley, Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats, 1821

White Sunrise (North Cascades)

Soon will she lie like a white-frost sunrise.     Yellow oats and brown wheat, barley pale as rye, Long since your sheaves have yielded to the thresher,     Felt the girdle loosened, seen the tresses fly. -George Meredith, Love in the Valley, 1851

Melancholy Grace (North Cascades)

Smiles on past Misfortune's brow Soft Reflection's hand can trace; And o'er the cheek of Sorrow throw A melancholy grace; -Gray, Ode on the Pleasure Arising from Vicissitude, 1775

Cloud City (North Cascades)

Now sunk the sun; the closing hour of day Came onward, mantled o'er with sober gray; Nature in silence bid the world repose; When near the road a stately palace rose: There by the moon through ranks of trees they pass, Whose verdure crown'd their sloping sides of grass. -Thomas Parnell, The Hermit, 1722 I sift the snow on the mountains below,         And their great pines groan aghast; And all the night 'tis my pillow white,         While I sleep in the arms of the blast. -Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Cloud, 1820

Stillness (Lassen)

Lake Leman woos me with its crystal face, The mirror where the stars and mountains view The stillness of their aspect in each trace Its clear depth yields of their far height and hue: -Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: Canto the Third, 1816