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(Lines
written in the Vale of Chamouni)
1
The
everlasting universe of things
Flows through the
mind, and rolls its rapid waves,
Now dark - now
glittering - now reflecting gloom -
Now lending
splendor, where from secret springs
The source of
human thought its tribute brings
Of waters, - with a
sound but half its own,
Such as a feeble brook will
oft assume
In the wild woods, amon the mountains
lone,
Where waterfalls around it leap for ever,
Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river
Over
its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves.
2
Thus
thou, Ravine of Arve - dark, deep Ravine-
Thou
many-colored, many voiced vale,
Over whose pines, and
crags, and caverns sail
Fast cloud-shadows and
sunbeams: awful scene,
Where Power in likeness of the
Arve comes down
From the ice-gulfs that gird his
secret throne,
Bursting through these dark mountains
like the flame
Of lightning through the tempest;
-thou dost lie,
Thy giant brood of pines around thee
clinging,
Children of elder time, in whose devotion
The chainless winds still come and ever came
To drink
their odors, and their mighty swinging
To hear - an
old and solemn harmony;
Thine earthly rainbows
stretched across the sweep
Of the ethereal waterfall,
whose veil
Robes some unsculptured image; the strange
sleep
Which when the voices of the desert fail
Wraps all in its own deep eternity;-
Thy caverns
echoing to the Arve's commotion,
A loud, lone sound
no other sound can tame;
Thou art pervaded with that
ceaseless motion,
Thou art the path of that unresting
sound-
Dizzy Ravine! and when I gaze on thee
I
seem as in a trance sublime and strange
To muse on my
own separate fantasy,
My own, my human mind, which
passively
Now renders and receives fast influencings,
Holding an unremitting interchange
With the clear
universe of things around;
One legion of wild
thoughts, whose wandering wings
Now float above thy
darkness, and now rest
Where that or thou art no
unbidden guest,
In the still cave of the witch Poesy,
Seeking among the shadows that pass by
Ghosts of all
things that are, some shade of thee,
Some phantom,
some faint image; till the breast
From which they
fled recalls them, thou art there!
3
Some say
that gleams of a remoter world
Visit the soul in
sleep,-that death is slumber,
And that its shapes the
busy thoughts outnumber
Of those who wake and live.
-I look on high;
Has some unknown omnipotence
unfurled
The veil of life and death? or do I lie
In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep
Spread
far and round and inaccessibly
Its circles? For the
very spirit fails,
Driven like a homeless cloud from
steep to steep
That vanishes amon the viewless gales!
Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky,
Mont Blanc
appears,-still snowy and serene-
Its subject
mountains their unearthly forms
Pile around it, ice
and rock; broad vales between
Of frozen floods,
unfathomable deeps,
Blue as the overhanging heaven,
that spread
And wind among the accumulated steeps;
A desert peopled by the storms alone,
Save when the
eagle brings some hunter's bone,
And the wolf tracks
her there - how hideously
Its shapes are heaped
around! rude, bare, and high,
Ghastly, and scarred,
and riven. -Is this the scene
Where the old
Earthquake-demon taught her young
Ruin? Were these
their toys? or did a sea
Of fire envelop once this
silent snow?
None can reply - all seems eternal now.
The wilderness has a mysterious tongue
Which teaches
awful doubt, or faith so mild,
So solemn, so serene,
that man may be,
But for such faith, with nature
reconciled;
Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to
repeal
Large codes of fraud and woe; not understood
By all, but which the wise, and great, and good
Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel.
4
The
fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams,
Ocean, and all the living things that dwell
Within
the daedal earth; lightning, and rain,
Earthquake,
and fiery flood, and hurricane,
The torpor of the
year when feeble dreams
Visit the hidden buds, or
dreamless sleep
Holds every future leaf and flower;
-the bound
With which from that detested trance they
leap;
The works and ways of man, their death and
birth,
And that of him, and all that his may be;
All things that move and breathe with toil and sound
Are born and die; revolve, subside, and swell.
Power
dwells apart in its tranquility,
Remote, serene, and
inaccessible:
And this, the naked countenance of
earth,
On which I gaze, even these primeval mountains
Teach the adverting mind. The glaciers creep
Like
snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains,
Slow rolling on; there, many a precipice,
Frost and
the Sun in scorn of mortal power
Have piled: dome,
pyramid, and pinnacle,
A city of death, distinct with
many a tower
And wall impregnable of beaming ice.
Yet not a city, but a flood of ruin
Is there, that
from the boundaries of the sky
Rolls its perpetual
stream; vast pines are strewing
Its destined path, or
in the mangled soil
Branchless and shattered stand;
the rocks, drawn down
From yon remotest waste, have
overthrown
The limits of the dead and living world,
Never to be reclaimed. The dwelling-place
Of insects,
beasts, and birds, becomes its spoil
Their food and
their retreat for ever gone,
So much of life and joy
is lost. The race
Of man flies far in dread; his work
and dwelling
Vanish, like smoke before the tempest's
stream,
And their place is not known. Below, vast
caves
Shine in the rushing torrents' restless gleam,
Which from those secret chasms in tumult welling
Meet
in the vale, and one majestic River,
The breath and
blood of distant lands , for ever
Rolls its loud
waters to the ocean-waves,
Breathes its swift vapors
to the circling air.
5
Mont Blanc yet gleams
on high:-the power is there,
The still and solemn
power of many sights,
And many sounds, and much of
life and death.
In the calm darkness of the moonless
nights,
In the lone glare of day, the snows descend
Upon that mountain; none beholds them there,
Nor when
the flakes burn in the sinking sun,
Or the star-beams
dart through them:-Winds contend
Silently there, and
heap the snow with breath
Rapid and strong, but
silently! Its home
The voiceless lightning in these
solitudes
Keeps innocently, and like vapor broods
Over the snow. The secret Strength of things
Which
governs thought, and to the infinite dome
Of Heaven
is as a law, inhabits thee!
And what were thou, and
earth, and stars, and sea,
If to the human mind's
imaginings
Silence and solitude were vacancy?
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