The Mountain Spirit

I am the Queen of the Mountain,
     I walk the towering crag,
And my song goes out with the cataract's shout
     As it leaps from jag to jag.
I wreathe my head with the sun-bows, 
     Where the waters are torn to mist, 
And the plash of my feet into jewels beats 
     The pool by the moonbeam kissed.

When Hurricane - storm's black shepherd – 
     Comes driving his bellowing flocks,
I pluck from their fleece the shaggy frieze
     That mantles my midnight rocks.
But dyed in the splendors of Morning,
     Their robes are like banners unrolled, 
When I snatch and sow, through the valleys below,
     Her jewels of beryl and gold.

As the feet of a hovering petrel
     Have glanced where the breakers curled, 
So lightly I've sprung from the avalanche, hung,
     Hair-poised, o'er a slumbering world.
With my hand in the eagle's eyrie, 
     And my foot on the dizziest peak, 
I have snatched away his untorn prey 
     And laughed at his angry shriek!

But when a mysterious murmur, 
     And rote of invisible things,
Steal down the aisles of my dim defiles, 
     And you watch as for angel wings, 
I sit in the arch of a moon-bow,
     Where the mists of the cataract gleam, 
And the low, weird hum of my song holds dumb
     The world, in a magic dream.

O, I am the Queen of the Mountain!
     The door of the dawn I unbar;
And the sunset waits at her golden gates
     Till I kindle her evening star.
The cataracts weave my mantle, 
     Their rainbows are my crown;
This sceptre of mine is a splintered pine, 
     And the eagle's crag is my throne!