Rocking

“ I am right in calling this mass of rock, which is a spur of the mountain's slope, a wall; for I look down from its top to the next inclosure far below, now overgrown and wild. What is natural and what was made by man has become so blended together, or has always been so, that I can choose to look at it as my mood may be, and feel the repose of nature or enjoy the disposing choice of art. ”

“ Rock-a-bye, baby, thy cradle is green; Father's a nobleman, mother's a queen; And Betty's a lady, and wears a gold ring; And Johnny's a drummer, and drums for the King. Hush-a-bye, baby, on the tree-top, When the wind blows the cradle will rock; When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall, Down will come baby, bough, cradle, and all. ”

“ How your black and white would burn! On this rock, high and lifted up, come and sit. You are panting from the long pull and the steep pull up the gorge; but you forget it all in the landscape, near and remote, that lies under your eye. ”

“ Here in the very heart of the rock, cut and worn into weird and fantastic shapes, are halls, passages, and declivities, twistings and windings, amongst which the imagination runs riot and calls up the visions of strange, elfish, unearthly forms to people the uncanny surroundings. ”

“ I had been often told that the rock before me was the haunt of a genius, and that several had been entertained with music who had passed by it, but never heard that the musician had before made himself visible. ”

“ One time they muffle themselves in clouds from head to foot, so we cannot detect a suggestive line or a contour; another, throwing off all disguise, they expose their most secret beauties to the free gaze of the multitude. This is to set the beholder’s blood on fire with the passion to climb as high as those gray shafts of everlasting rock that so proudly survey the creeping leagues beneath them. ”

“ Separated of necessity by these, the waters left the top of the precipice in four or five distinct bands or ribbands of bright wave and foam, soon dashed into whiteness; and towards the bottom of the fall at last found their way all together; which they celebrated with a rush and a dance and a sparkle and a roar that filled all the rocky abyss into which they plunged. The life, the brightness, the peculiar form, the wild surroundings, of this cataract made it a noted beauty. ”

“ But to discuss this it must be assumed that every climbing-machine, every rock-scrambler, has found his natural sport, for the man to whom this pastime is open must be able to discern grace and symmetry in the water-hewn rocks, picturesqueness in the beetling crags, and lively interest in the many charms of the ghylls of the fells. ”

“ My one love came along,
And I ran the slope of my high hill
To follow a thread of song.
His eyes were hard as porphyry
With looking on cruel lands;
His voice went slipping over me
Like terrible silver hands. ”

“ And, behold, as we look farther into it, it is all touched and troubled, like waves by a summer breeze; rippled, far more delicately than seas or lakes are rippled; they only undulate along their surfaces—this rock trembles through its every fibre, like the chords of an Eolian harp—like the stillest air of spring with the echoes of a child's voice. Into the heart of all those great mountains, through every tossing of their boundless crests, and deep beneath all their unfathomable defiles, flows that strange quivering of their substance. ”

“ When the good man began to play upon his favorite instrument he was astonished at the sound that came from it. The beautiful notes of the pipes sounded clear and strong down into the valley, and spread over the hills, and up the sides of the mountain beyond, while, after a little interval, an echo came back from the rocky hill on the other side of the valley. ”

“ Sheltered by the rock, you breathe the coolness of upper air without its rapid chill, and indulge for a while in lazy contemplation. It is the very luxury of out-door existence. Perhaps you are somewhat overcome by the labour of the ascent, and unconsciousness steals gently on you ”

“ Because the little brook eddies and purls round the stones, hitting them as it passes; sometimes the water falls down a large stone, and strikes against the water below; or sometimes it grates the little pebbles together as they lie in its bed. Each of these blows makes a small globe of sound-waves, which spread and spread till they fall on your ear, and because they fall quickly and regularly, they make a low, musical note. ”

“ Come, break up the long dance under the hill, Or if you lie in the hollows of the sea, Leave lonely the long hoarding surges, leave The cymbals of the waves to clash alone, And shaking the sea-tangles from your hair Gather about us. ”

“ The great rock seems as steadfast as ever, as menacing to life and property, but the day comes when the last diver has done his work, the last connecting link is made and by the slightest touch an infant can blow the mighty structure to pieces. ”

“ I ride with the voices of waterfalls!
I swing on as one in a dream—I swing
Down the airy hollows, I shout, I sing!
The world is gone like an empty word:
My body's a bough in the wind, my heart a bird! ”

“ They lay in heavy sleep on the rock ledges where the heat waves danced. It isn't wise, however, to put one's trust in that slumber and go climbing over those sun-blasted rocks with unprotected ankles. ”

“ When we passed Long Branch the motion was a steady rock from side to side, that made one feel like a baby in a cradle, and before bedtime it was a violent swing that flung one about like a toy, and tossed the furniture around like doll-house belongings. ”

“ Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.And now it was evening. ”

“ As soon as thy feet are on the moss, cut the rope, stop not to untie it, fall on thy breast, and crawl into that hole—my finger shows it now—where slab of stone leans unto stone, and the body of a large heart may lie hidden. ”

“ As if by force of example and sympathy after so many lessons, the rocks, the hardest material, had been endeavoring to whirl or flow into the forms of the most fluid. The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time. ”

“ That rock is accessible by but a single foot-track, and it is gashed and riven by grim chasms, yet withal great oaks and beech-trees flourish atop among the boulders, and there are drifts of fragrant wild flowers, and legions of birds and other wild creatures dwell there; and the lights and colours of heaven play about the rock, and the winds of heaven visit it with wholesome air. ”

“ So our divine Rock, once covering us, always covers us. The same yesterday, to-day and for ever! always good, always kind, always sympathetic! You often hold a sunshade over your head passing along the road or a street; but after a while your arm gets tired, and the very effort to create the shadow makes you weary. But the rock in the mountains, with fingers of everlasting stone, holds its own shadow. ”

“ The hips and elbows and other bones of Nature stick out here and there in the shape of rocks which give character to the scenery, and an unchangeable, unpurchasable look to a landscape that without them would have been in danger of being fattened by art and money out of all its native features. ”

“ When the sky is dull and gray, and the wind whips the stunted trees on the Point—trees that lean inland with branches all twisted to the landward side from pressure of many gales in their growing years—and the surf is booming out its basso harmonies, the Rock is no place for a fisherman. ”

“ Yet it draws us like those sounds which were the first music to man, the sough of the wind in the wood, and the lap of the wave on the shore, ever the sweetest yet to ourselves. And the grey stones still touch us and bind our thoughts and our love of all our forefathers to themselves in elemental memories. ”

“ These drops, which on falling glisten like points of gold and sound like the notes of a musical instrument, unite on the turf and murmuring, murmuring with a sound like that of bees humming about the flowers, glide on through the gravel, and form a rill and contend with the obstacles in their way, and gather volume and leap and flee and run, sometimes with a laugh, sometimes with sighs, until they fall into a lake. ”

“ Rocks break its plunge, and give it pause. And then this shape of beauty, disarrayed, but fairer thus, springs, not frantic or sullen, into a gloomy chasm, but sweeps, a mist of sunshine, down behind an iridescent veil, upon the white splendors of its own image. ”

“ And our admiration must be excited again and again as we toil and study and learn that this vast job of rockwork, so far-reaching in its influences, was done by agents so fragile and small as are these flowers of the mountain clouds. ”

“ Look! it has reached the outer ledge of rock. The men spring out of it, waving their hats, and shouting "Success;" and the men on board answer with a loud hurrah, while the women cannot keep back their tears. ”

“ Sometimes clinging with iron grasp to pinnacles of rock, he swung himself along the side of some terrific precipice, where the slightest misstep meant a rush into eternity upon the rocks a thousand feet below. ”

“ As the girls grew used to the thunderous sounds they delighted to speculate from which bastion, or ledge, or flowering bush, would come that little puff of smoke, to be followed by the lightning and thunder of man's invention, scarcely less terrible than those of nature's cloud contests. ”

“ I saw men doing it not far from here. They made a hole in a rock and they put one end of a string in it. Then where the other end was, a man pushed a thing like a sort of handle, and the rock was all burst open, and nobody had touched it. ”

“ They danced without speaking; one rhythm took them; like a single person they glided over the smooth, perfect floor, and, more and more to her, it was as if the floor flowed with them, bearing them along. ”

“ On the rare occasions when we were not all seated on a flat stone admiring the prospect in concert, four scattered wanderers might be seen leaning on their axes, wrapped in serene contemplation of the glories of a steep slope of screes. ”

“ And the pendulums will be harps encrusted with precious stones. They will swing to and fro on angel wings, making music in the ear of God, and flashing His glory through all the blissful cycles of eternity! ”

“ She plunges up the slope toward the light, her own refulgence illuminating those who come immediately after her. The music reaches its wildest and highest point as the crowds falling in widely behind her, begins to ascend the slope. ”

“ I daresay she knew him as well as she knew the old rock. Very old rock. The rock of ages—and the aged man—landmarks of her youth. Then the mules started walking smartly forward, with the three peasants striding alongside of them, and vanished between the trees. ”

“ That last is no more than a foot high, and about seven paces across, a mere flat top of a gray rock which smokes like a hot cinder after a shower, and where no man would care to venture a naked sole before sunset. ”

“ But one morning, very early, before you are dressed, you hear suddenly, close at hand, that clear, ringing challenge of the bugle which bids all human hearts to rise and triumph, and the vehement whirring rhythm of the drums, like a violent new pulse beating in your own body. ”

“ I sang the songs I thought of; songs full of words that must not be spoken or written down. Then I made faces like the faces on the rocks, and I twisted myself about like the twisted ones, and I lay down flat on the ground like the dead ones, and I went up to one that was grinning, and put my arms round him and hugged him. And so I went on and on through the rocks till I came to a round mound in the middle of them. ”

“ Then a drum started on a high beat, and there came the deep, powerful burst of men singing a heavy, savage music, like a wind roaring in some timeless forest, many mature men singing in one breath, like the wind ”

“ Yet these improvisations returned always to the eternal boom, boom, boom of an underlying rhythm, and met with others in the sudden weaving and ravelling of amazing chords. An ecstasy of wild young bodies beat living into the blasts that shook the windows of the solemn houses. ”

“ Fastened to arms, legs, and bodies are strings, from which dangle ornaments that quiver in the air, as the bodies sway in time to the music. The men continually keep up a harvest song, while the women join in, clapping their hands in unison with the movement. ”

“ During the day we used to stand and observe the swell surging into the large cavities formed by continual action, and tossed out again, as if the rocks had said with Phineas, ‘Friend, thee isn’t wanted here;’ while the whole water around, nothing daunted, was boiling and excited, dancing and glancing and sparkling in the sun as if in glee, or in the spirit of fun and mischief. ”