[Illustration]
IT is true of the Hudson, as of all other rivers, that to be seen to
advantage it should form the middle, not the foreground, of the picture.
Those who go to Albany by steam have something the same idea of the
scenery of West Point that an inside passenger may have of the effect of
a stage-coach at top-speed. It is astonishing how much foreground goes
for in landscape; and there are few passes of scenery where it is more
naturally beautiful than those of the Hudson. In the accompanying
drawing, the picturesque neighborhood of Undercliff, the seat of General
Morris, lies between the river and the artist, and directly opposite
stands the peak of Crow Nest, mentioned in the description of West
Point.
Crow Nest is one of the most beautiful mountains of America for shape,
verdure, and position; and when the water is unruffled, and the moon
sits on his summit, he looks like a monarch crowned with a single pearl.
This is the scene of the first piece-work of fancy which has come from
the practical brain of America,—the poem of “The Culprit Fay.” The
opening is so descriptive of the spot that it is quite in place here;
and to those who have not seen the poem (as most European readers have
not) it will convey an idea of a production which, in my opinion, treads
close on the heels of the “Midsummer Night’s Dream:”—
’Tis the middle watch of a summer’s night,—
The earth is dark, but the heavens are bright;
Nought is seen in the vault on high
But the moon and the stars and the cloudless sky,
And the flood which rolls its milky hue,—
A river of light on the welkin blue.
The moon looks down on old Crow Nest,
She mellows the shades on his shaggy breast,
And seems his huge gray form to throw
In a silver cone on the wave below;
His sides are broken by spots of shade
By the walnut boughs and the cedar made,
And through their clustering branches dark
Glimmers and dies the firefly’s spark,—
Like starry twinkles that momently break
Through the rifts of the gathering tempest rack.
The stars are on the moving stream,
And fling, as its ripples gently flow,
A burnish’d length of wavy beam
In an eel-like, spiral line below.
The winds are whist, and the owl is still,
The bat in the shelvy rock is hid;
And nought is heard on the lonely hill
But the cricket’s chirp and the answer shrill
Of the gauze-winged katy-did,
And the plaints of the mourning whip-poor-will,
Who mourns unseen, and ceaseless sings
Ever a note of wail and wo,
Till morning spreads her rosy wings,
And earth and sky in her glances glow.
’Tis the hour of fairy ban and spell:
The wood-tick has kept the minutes well;
He has counted them all with click and stroke
Deep in the heart of the mountain-oak;
And he has awakened the sentry-elve
Who sleeps with him in the haunted tree,
To bid him ring the hour of twelve,
And call the fays to their revelry.
. . . . . . . . .
They come from beds of lichen green,
They creep from the mullen’s velvet screen;
Some on the backs of beetles fly
From the silver tops of moon-touch’d trees,
Where they swing in their cob-web hammocks high,
And rock’d about in the evening breeze;
Some from the hum-bird’s downy nest,—
They had driven him out by elfin power,
And pillow’d on plumes of his rainbow breast
Had slumber’d there till the charmed hour;
Some had lain in a scarp of the rock,
With glittering rising-stars inlaid,
And some had open’d the four-o’clock,
And stolen within its purple shade.
And now they throng the moonlight glade,
Above—below—on every side,
Their little minion forms arrayed
In the tricksy pomp of fairy pride.
The general assembly of the fairies is at last complete, and they
proceed to the trial of the culprit fay, who has extinguished his elfin
lamp and paralyzed his wings by a love for a mortal maid. He is
condemned to penances, which are most exquisitely described, and
constitute the greater part of the poem; and he finally expiates his
sins, and is forgiven. There is a fineness of description, and a
knowledge of the peculiarities of American nature, in birds, fishes,
flowers, and the phenomena of this particular region, which constitute
this little poem a book of valuable information as well as an exquisite
work of fancy.
Just under Crow Nest, buried in the heavy leaves of a ravine, springs a
waterfall like a naiad from the depths of the forest, and plunges down
into the river. The rambles in and about its neighborhood are cool and
retired; and it is a favorite place for lovers from New York, who run up
in the steamer in three hours, and find the honeymoon goes swimmingly
off there,—the excellent hotel within half a mile supplying the _real_,
without which the _ideal_ is found to be very trumpery. The marble tomb
of a cadet, who was killed by the bursting of a gun, forms a picturesque
object, and gives a story to the spot.
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