I.
"How beautiful! how wonderful! how strange!"

Such words, less thought than mere emotion, well
Might Ranolf with abated breath, in tone
That wonder-stricken to a whisper fell,
For Amo's looks of triumph now exchange:
So fair a vision charmed our loiterers lone,
As at the closing of a sultry day,
In search of some good camping-ground
They paddled, up Mahána's Lake,
A small canoe by chance they found
(And Amo settled they might take)
With little care half-hid in sedge
Flax-fastened to the water's edge—
Its owners clearly far away.

From the low sky-line of the hilly range
Before them, sweeping down its dark-green face
Into the lake that slumbered at its base,
A mighty Cataract—so it seemed
Over a hundred steps of marble streamed
page 268 And gushed, or fell in dripping overflow—
Flat steps, in flights half-circled—row o'er row,
Irregularly mingling side by side;
They and the torrent-curtain wide,
All rosy-hued, it seemed, with sunset's glow.—
—But what is this!—no roar, no sound,
Disturbs that torrent's hush profound!
The wanderers near and nearer come—
Still is the mighty Cataract dumb!
A thousand fairy lights may shimmer
With tender sheen, with glossy glimmer,
O'er curve advanced and salient edge
Of many a luminous water-ledge;
A thousand slanting shadows pale
May fling their thin transparent veil
O'er deep recess and shallow dent
In many a watery stair's descent:
Yet, mellow-bright, or mildly dim,
Both lights and shades—both dent and rim—
Each wavy streak, each warm snow-tress—
Stand rigid, mute and motionless!
No faintest murmur—not a sound—
Relieves that Cataract's hush profound;
No tiniest bubble, not a flake
Of floating foam is seen to break
The smoothness where it meets the Lake:
Along that shining surface move
No ripples; not the slightest swell
Rolls o'er the mirror darkly green,
Where, every feature limned so well—
Pale, silent, and serene as death—
The cataract's image hangs beneath
The cataract—but not more serene,
page 269 More phantom-silent than is seen
The white rose-hued reality above.

They paddle past—for on the right
Another Cataract conies in sight;
Another broader, grander flight
Of steps—all stainless, snowy-bright!
They land—their curious way they track
Near thickets made by contrast black;
And then that wonder seems to be
A Cataract carved in Parian stone,
Or any purer substance known—
Agate or milk-chalcedony!
Its showering snow-cascades appear
Long ranges bright of stalactite,
And sparry frets and fringes white,
Thick-falling, plenteous, tier o'er tier;
Its crowding stairs, in bold ascent
Piled up that silvery-glimmering height,
Are layers, they know—accretions stow
Of hard silicious sediment:
For as they gain a rugged road,
And cautious climb the solid rime,
Each step becomes a terrace broad—
Each terrace a wide basin brimmed
With water, brilliant, yet in hue
The tenderest delicate harebell-blue
Deepening to violet! Slowly climb
The twain, and turn from time to time
To mark the hundred baths in view-
Crystalline azure, snowy-rimmed—
The marge of every beauteous pond
Curve after curve—each lower beyond
page 270 The higher—outs weeping white and wide.
Like snowy lines of foam that glide
O'er level sea sands lightly skimmed
By thin sheets of the glistening tide.
They climb those milk-white fiats incrusted
And netted o'er with wavy ropes
Of wrinkled silica. At last-
Each basin's heat increasing fast—
The topmost step the pair surmount,
And lo, the cause of all! Around,
The circling cliffs a crater bound—
Cliffs damp with dark-green rnoss—their slopes
All crimson-stained with blots and streaks—
White-mottled and vermilion-rusted;
And in the midst, beneath a cloud
That ever upward rolls and reeks
And hides the sky with its dim shroud,
Look where up shoots a fuming fount—
Up through a blue and boiling pool
Perennial—a great sapphire steaming,
In that coralline crater gleaming.
Upwelling ever, amethystal,
Ebullient comes the bubbling crystal!
Still growing cooler and more cool
As down the porcelain stairway slips
The fluid flint, and slowly drips,
And hangs each basin's curling lips
With crusted fringe each year increases,
Thicker than shear-forgotten fleeces;
More close and regular than rows,
Long rows of snowy trumpet-flowers
Some day to hang in garden-bowers,
When strangers shall these wilds enclose.
page 271 But see! in all that lively spread
Of blue and white and vermeil red,
How dark with growths of greenest gloss,
Just at the edge of that first ledge,
A little rocky islet peeps
Into the crater-caldron's deeps.
Along the ledge they lightly cross,
And from that place of vantage gaze
O'er all the scene—and every phase
The current takes as down it strays:
They note where'er, by step or stair,
By brimming bath, on hollow reef
Or hoary plain, its magic rain
Can reach a branch, a flower, a leaf—
The branching spray, leaf, blossom gay,
Are blanched and stiffened into stone!
So round about lurks tracery strewn
Of daintiest-moulded porcelain-ware,
Or coral wreaths and clusters rare,
A white flint-foliage!—rather say
Such fairy-work as frost alone
Were equal to, could it o'erlay
With tender crust of crystals fair,—
Fine spikes so delicately piled—
Not wintry trees, leafstripped and bare,
But summer's vegetation, rich and wild.