"The land of the sky"

“I don’t know how you can say that, Eric,” replies Aunt Markham, “when you have talked incessantly of the beauty of the mountains, and said that everybody ought to go to see them.”

“Wandering as in a magic dream, By shadowy wood and crystal stream, By mountain-peak and forest-dell, Where fauns and fairies love to dwell, We enter the enchanted clime, Forgot...

“And always, be the landscape what it may— Blue misty hill, or sweep of glimmering plain— It is the eye’s endeavor still to gain The fine, faint limit of the bounding day. God h...

“A land of streams! some, like a downward smoke, Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go; And some through wavering lights and shadows broke, Rolling a slumb’rous sheet of...

“Cliffs that rear their haughty head Hard o’er the river’s darksome bed, Where now all naked, wild, and gray, Now waving all with greenwood spray; The trees to every crevice clu...

Eric is undutiful enough to disregard this appeal. He walks instead up to the man who has warned us, and who, with supreme indifference to the rain, is sitting on his horse watc...

“The velvet grass seems carpet meet For the light fairies’ lively feet; Yon tufted knoll with daisies strown, Might make proud Oberon a throne; While hidden in the thicket nigh...

“As she fled fast through sun and shade, The happy winds upon her played, Blowing the ringlets from the braid; She looked so lovely as she swayed The rain with dainty finger-tip...

She points as she speaks, and we all look round. Immediately behind the Paint Rock, on which we are gathered, stands an abrupt and rugged mountain, towering several hundred feet...

This question is addressed to the assembled party the day after our return to Asheville. The drive from Alexander’s was very pleasant, and the next day is brilliantly clear—so c...

The sun is shining brightly, and his golden lances light up the depths of the forest into which we enter—an enchanted world of far-reaching greenness, the stillness of which is...

“Once I sat upon a mountain, Gazing on the mist before me; Like a great gray sheet of canvas, Shrouding all things in its cover, Did it float ’twixt earth and heaven.”

“Then it must be a remarkable county,” says Mrs. Cardigan, looking up from a map which she is studying with Mr. Lanier—this has become one of our chief amusements since we obtai...

The early sunshine is lying warm and bright over the valley, and the far mountains stand fully revealed in soft blue loveliness beneath the radiant sky, when we bid farewell nex...

We return to the hotel through the soft, starlit dusk, and find that the company has changed during our absence. Several newcomers have arrived, Mr. Charlton has taken his depar...

“Nature has known no change, felt no decay, For untold ages in this ancient land; Her dark woods wave, her rivers hold their way, Majestic as when first from Nature’s hand; Down...

“And there are haunts in that green land, oh! who may dream or tell Of all the shaded loveliness it hides in grot and dell, By fountains flinging rainbow-spray on dark and gloss...

“Oh, set us down together in some place Where not a voice can break our heaven of bliss, Where naught but rocks and I can see her face Softening beneath the marvel of thy grace,...