Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, MT. RANIER, by HARRY HIBBARD KEMP


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MT. RANIER, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Snow-garmented, immense, / and holding audience
Last Line: Far-flashing monarch of a dead domain.
Subject(s): Mount Rainier; Mountains; Hills; Downs (great Britain)


SNOW-GARMENTED, immense,
And holding audience
With subject clouds, he seems to poise in air,—
And at his mighty base
An hundred towns find place
And two great cities rival-thewed and fair.

Above him, without bound,
The heavens arch profound,
As loverlike he greets the risen sun.
His diamond-scattered snows
Reflect the golden glows
And purple glooms of eve as day is done.

There mile on mile he shines
Above his ragged pines,
An empire tributary to his view:
Ten thousand wealthy farms,
The blue Sound's gleaming arms,
The distant ocean's wavering edge of blue.

There all the star-hushed night,
Like a great ghost in white,
He communes with the Spirit of the Dark,
While murmuring below
Life's tides of being flow
And cities gleam like shards which flash a spark.

How many thousand years
Of human hopes and fears
He's known the sun and stars, no voice may tell—
But long ere humankind
Groped slowly into mind
He hushed primeval forests with his spell.

How many thousand years
Of human hopes and fears
He yet shall tower! till his slaughtered trees
Have risen far and wide
As homes where folk may bide
In many smoky cities at his knees.

And then when man is dust
Still with His shoulders thrust
The black cloud-tumult of the storm in twain!
When Life shall cease to be
He still will greet the sea
Far-flashing monarch of a dead domain.





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