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(From Italy)
WHO first beholds those everlasting clouds, | |
| Seedtime and harvest, morning, noon, and night, | |
| Still where they were, steadfast, immovable,— | |
| Those mighty hills, so shadowy, so sublime, | |
| As rather to belong to heaven than earth— | 5 |
| But instantly receives into his soul | |
| A sense, a feeling that he loses not, | |
| A something that informs him ’t is an hour | |
| Whence he may date henceforward and forever. | |
| To me they seemed the barriers of a world, | 10 |
| Saying, Thus far, no farther! and as o’er | |
| The level plain I travelled silently, | |
| Nearing them more and more, day after day, | |
| My wandering thoughts my only company, | |
| And they before me still,—oft as I looked, | 15 |
| A strange delight was mine, mingled with fear, | |
| A wonder as at things I had not heard of! | |
| And still and still I felt as if I gazed | |
| For the first time!—Great was the tumult there, | |
| Deafening the din, when in barbaric pomp | 20 |
| The Carthaginian on his march to Rome | |
| Entered their fastnesses. Trampling the snows, | |
| The war-horse reared; and the towered elephant | |
| Upturned his trunk into the murky sky, | |
| Then tumbled headlong, swallowed up and lost, | 25 |
He and his rider.
Now the scene is changed; | |
| And o’er the Simplon, o’er the Splugen winds | |
| A path of pleasure. Like a silver zone | |
| Flung about carelessly, it shines afar, | |
| Catching the eye in many a broken link, | 30 |
| In many a turn and traverse as it glides; | |
| And oft above and oft below appears, | |
| Seen o’er the wall by him who journeys up, | |
| As if it were another, through the wild | |
| Leading along he knows not whence or whither. | 35 |
| Yet through its fairy-course, go where it will, | |
| The torrent stops it not, the rugged rock | |
| Opens and lets it in; and on it runs, | |
| Winning its easy way from clime to clime | |
| Through glens locked up before.—Not such my path! | 40 |
| The very path for them that dare defy | |
| Danger, nor shrink, wear he what shape he will; | |
| That o’er the caldron, when the flood boils up, | |
| Hang as in air, gazing and shuddering on | |
| Till fascination comes and the brain turns! | 45 |
| The very path for them, that list, to choose | |
| Where best to plant a monumental cross, | |
| And live in story like Empedocles; | |
| A track for heroes, such as he who came, | |
| Ere long, to win, to wear the iron crown; | 50 |
| And (if aright I judge from what I felt | |
| Over the Drance, just where the Abbot fell, | |
| Rolled downward in an after-dinner’s sleep) | |
| The same as Hannibal’s. But now ’t is passed, | |
| That turbulent Chaos; and the promised land | 55 |
| Lies at my feet in all its loveliness! | |
| To him who starts up from a terrible dream, | |
| And lo, the sun is shining, and the lark | |
| Singing aloud for joy, to him is not | |
| Such sudden ravishment as now I feel | 60 |
| At the first glimpses of fair Italy. | |
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