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

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

Spirit of Solitude (Acadia)

Earth, ocean, air, belovèd brotherhood! If our great Mother has imbued my soul With aught of natural piety to feel Your love, and recompense the boon with mine; If dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even, With sunset and its gorgeous ministers, And solemn midnight's tingling silentness; If autumn's hollow sighs in the sere wood, And winter robing with pure snow and crowns Of starry ice the grey grass and bare boughs; If spring's voluptuous pantings when she breathes Her first sweet kisses, have been dear to me; If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beast I consciously have injured, but still loved And cherished these my kindred; then forgive This boast, belovèd brethren, and withdraw No portion of your wonted favour now! -Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Spirit of Solitude, 1816

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

Ancient Mariner (Acadia)

In mist or cloud on mast or shroud     It perch'd for vespers nine, Whiles all the night thro' fog-smoke white     Glimmer'd the white moon-shine. "God save thee, ancyent Marinere! -William Wordsworth and Samuel T. Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads, 1798

Foliage of Ocean (Acadia)

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams   The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,   Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams,   Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,   And saw in sleep old palaces and towers   Quivering within the wave's intenser day,   All overgrown with azure moss and flowers   So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou   For whose path the Atlantic's level powers   Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below   The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear   The sapless foliage of the ocean, know   Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,   And tremble and despoil themselves: oh hear! -Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind, 1820

Fiery Altar (Acadia)

Seem'd all on fire, within, around,       Deep sacristy and altar's pale,   Shone every pillar foliage-bound,       And glimmer'd all the dead men's mail. -Sir Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel: Canto VI, 1805

Pale Blaze (Acadia)

A delight   Comes sudden on my heart, and I am glad   As I myself were there! Nor in this bower,   This little lime-tree bower, have I not mark'd   Much that has sooth'd me. Pale beneath the blaze   Hung the transparent foliage; and I watch'd   Some broad and sunny leaf, and lov'd to see   The shadow of the leaf and stem above   Dappling its sunshine! -Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Lime-tree Bower my Prison, 1800

Obelisks of Fire (Acadia)

Column, tower, and dome, and spire, Shine like obelisks of fire, Pointing with inconstant motion From the altar of dark ocean To the sapphire-tinted skies; As the flames of sacrifice From the marble shrines did rise, -Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills, 1819

Autumn Trellis (Acadia)

And the red and golden vines, Piercing with their trellis'd lines The rough, dark-skirted wilderness; -Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills, 1819

Autumn Lyre (Acadia)

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:   What if my leaves are falling like its own!   The tumult of thy mighty harmonies     Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,   Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,   My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!   Drive my dead thoughts over the universe   Like wither'd leaves to quicken a new birth!   And, by the incantation of this verse,   Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth   Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!   Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth   The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,   If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? -Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind, 1820

West Wind (Acadia)

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,   Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead   Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,   Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,   Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,   Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed   The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,   Each like a corpse within its grave, until   Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow   Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill   (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)   With living hues and odours plain and hill:   Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;   Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear! -Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind, 1820

Dark Distortion (Acadia)

Stair above stair the eddying waters rose, Circling immeasurably fast, and laved With alternating dash the gnarlèd roots Of mighty trees, that stretched their giant arms In darkness over it. I' the midst was left, Reflecting, yet distorting every cloud, A pool of treacherous and tremendous calm. -Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Spirit of Solitude, 1816

Hazel Memory (Acadia)

I would record with no reluctant voice The woods of autumn and their hazel bowers With milk-white clusters hung; the rod and line, -Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills, 1819

Secret Steps (Acadia)

In truth or fable consecrates, he felt And knew. When early youth had past, he left His cold fireside and alienated home To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands. Many a wide waste and tangled wilderness Has lured his fearless steps; and he has bought With his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men, His rest and food. Nature's most secret steps -Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Spirit of Solitude, 1816

Sisters (Lassen)

"Sisters and brothers, little maid, "How many may you be?" -William Wordsworth and Samuel T. Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads, 1798

Images of Solitude (Lassen)

There was a darkness, call it solitude, Or blank desertion, no familiar shapes Of hourly objects, images of trees, Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields; But huge and mighty Forms that do not live Like living men mov'd slowly through the mind By day and were the trouble of my dreams. -William Wordsworth The Prelude, Book 1: Childhood and School-time, 1805

Christmas Tree (Royal Gorge)

Again at Christmas did we weave     The holly round the Christmas hearth;     The silent snow possess'd the earth, And calmly fell our Christmas-eve: -Alfred lord Tennyson, In Memoriam A. H. H.: 78. Again at Christmas did we weave, 1872