Chocorua

I mount Chocorua's granite stair;
Below the Conway meadows dream;
And, like pavilions of the air,
An hundred peaks around me gleam.
 
An hundred sun-crowned domes loom free,
Above the morn's mid-mountain mist,
Like rocky islands in a sea
Of pearl and gold and amethyst.

Fair "Corway" of the mountain farms,
Red cottage homes 'mid fields of wheat;
The blue lakes slumber in thy arms,
The blue lakes ripple at thy feet.

An hundred vales below me glow,
Such vales as once the gods enticed;
I raise my charmed eyes, and lo!
The air with hills seems paradised.

Chocorua! Chocorua!
Sharp peak that bids the step beware;
The wildest crag the foot can climb,
'Mid all these pinnacles of air.

Upon thy barren cone is heard
No murmur of the world below;
The thin air cleaves no wing of bird,
Nor harp of pine makes music low.

Lonely, proud-peaked Chocorua!
Whose falling streams enchant my eye,
That lifts the venturous foot afar
Towards the gardens of the sky;

Such heights as thine seemed formed to show
The worth that in the spirit lies,
And lift the thought from things below
To view the gates of Paradise!

Wouldst thou be filled with high resolves?
Go stand upon the mountain stair,
And pride shall vanish as dissolves
The mist in morning's burning air.

A speck on Nature's rocky throne,
Thou there shalt learn the spirit's worth,
And feel one answered prayer alone
Is more than all the gains of earth.