Creator
[John Muir]
Recipient
Mrs.[Jeanne C.] Carr
Preview
Transcription
[2]you the beauty there, but it is all ice born beauty & too cold for you, & I was going to tell about the making of the South dome, but ice did that too, & about the hundred lakes that I found, but the ice made them everyone, & I had some groves to speak about - groves of surpassing loveliness in new pathless Yosemities, but thy all grew upon glacier drift, & I have nothing to send but what is frozen or freezable You like the music instruments that glaciers made, but no songs were so grand as those of the glaciers themselves, no falls so lofty as those wh poured from brows, & chasmed mountains of pure [illegible - blackened out] glaciers made the mountains & ground corn for [illegible - blackened out] , & the forest of silver fir, made smooth paths [illegible - blackened out] feet until the sacred Sierras have become the most approachable of mountains, Glaciers came down from heaven, & they are angels with folded wings, white wings of snowy bloom, locked hand in hand the little spirits did nobly - the primary mountain waves - unvital granite were soon carved to beauty they bared the lordly domes & fashion- ed the clustering spires smoothed godlike mountain brows & shaped lake cups for crystal waters - wove myriads of mazy canons, & spread them out like lace "they "remembered" the loud songed rivers & every tinkling rill, & the busy snow- flakes saw all the coming flowers, & the grand predestined forests they said "We will crack this rock for Cassiope where she may sway her tiny urns, Here we'll smooth a plat for green mosses, & round a bank for bryanthus bells. Thus labored the willing flake souls linked in close congregations of ice breaking rock food for the pines, as a bird crumbles bread for her young
Location
Yosemite
Date Original
[1871] Dec 11
Source
Original letter dimensions: 25.5 x 39.5 cm.
Resource Identifier
muir02_0609-let.tif
File Identifier
Reel 02, Image 0609
Copyright Status
Copyrighted
Copyright Statement
The unpublished works of John Muir are copyrighted by the Muir-Hanna Trust. To purchase copies of images and/or obtain permission to publish or exhibit them, see http://www.pacific.edu/Library/Find/Holt-Atherton-Special-Collections/Fees-and-Forms-.html
Owning Institution
University of the Pacific Library Holt-Atherton Special Collections. Please contact this institution directly to obtain copies of the images or permission to publish or use them beyond educational purposes.
Copyright Holder
Muir-Hanna Trust
Copyright Date
1984
Page Number
Page 2
Keywords
John Muir, correspondence, letters, author, writing, naturalist, California, correspondent, mail, message, post, exchange of letters, missive, notes, epistle
