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Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni
I. 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 | 5 |
| Of waters,—with a sound but half its own, | |
| Such as a feeble brook will oft assume | |
| In the wild woods, among the mountains lone, | |
| Where waterfalls around it leap forever, | |
| Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river | 10 |
| Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves. | |
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II. Thus thou, Ravine of Arve,—dark, deep ravine,— | |
| Thou many-colored, many-voicéd vale, | |
| Over whose pines and crags and caverns sail | |
| Fast clouds, shadows, and sunbeams; awful scene, | 15 |
| 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, | |
| The giant brood of pines around thee clinging, | 20 |
| 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 | 25 |
| 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 | 30 |
| 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 | 35 |
| 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; | 40 |
| 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, | 45 |
| 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! | |
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III. Some say that gleams of a remoter world | |
| Visit the soul in sleep,—that death is slumber, | 50 |
| 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 | 55 |
| Speed far around and inaccessibly | |
| Its circles? for the very spirit fails, | |
| Driven like a homeless cloud from steep to steep | |
| That vanishes among the viewless gales! | |
| Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky, | 60 |
| Mont Blanc appears, still, snowy, and serene,— | |
| Its subject mountains their unearthly forms | |
| Pile round it, ice and rock; broad vales between | |
| Of frozen floods, unfathomable deeps, | |
| Blue as the overhanging heaven, that spread | 65 |
| 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, | 70 |
| 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. | 75 |
| 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 | 80 |
| 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. | |
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IV. The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams, | |
| Ocean, and all the living things that dwell | 85 |
| Within the dædal 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 | 90 |
| 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. | 95 |
| Power dwells apart in its tranquillity, | |
| 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, | 100 |
| Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains, | |
| Slowly 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, | 105 |
| 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 | 110 |
| 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; | 115 |
| Their food and their retreat forever 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 | 120 |
| Shine in the rushing torrent’s 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, forever | |
| Rolls its loud waters to the ocean waves, | 125 |
| Breathes its swift vapors to the circling air. | |
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V. 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, | 130 |
| 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 | 135 |
| 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 | 140 |
| 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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