Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Switzerland and Austria: Vol. XVI. 1876–79. | | | | Switzerland: Alps, The | | The Alps | | Aubrey Thomas de Vere (1814–1902) |
| | (From Ode on the Ascent of the Alps)
HERE rest, my soul, from meteor dreams; | |
| And thou, my song, find rest. The streams | |
| That left at morn yon mountain’s brow | |
| Are sleeping with Locarno now. | |
| Though heaven in rapture finds her peace, | 5 |
| Earth seeks, perforce, from joy release. | |
| Gaze on those skies at once o’er all the earth | |
| Dissolving in a bath of purple dews, | |
| And spread thy soul abroad as widely forth | |
| Till love thy soul, as heaven the snows, suffuse. | 10 |
| Gaze, gaze on heaven; and mark, his clouds among, | |
| The sun, emerging in his luminous might: | |
| Gaze on the earth; and mark, o’er all, Mont Blanc, | |
| Answering that sinking orb with light for light: | |
| He sinks,—is set,—but upwards without end | 15 |
| Two mighty beams, diverging, | |
| Like hands in benediction raised, extend; | |
| From the great deep a crimson mist is surging; | |
| The peaks all round are funeral pyres | |
| On which the flaming day expires; | 20 |
| Strange gleams, each moment ten times bright, | |
| Shoot round, transfiguring as they smite | |
| All spaces of the empyreal height,— | |
| Deep gleams, high words which God to man doth speak; | |
| From peak to solemn peak in order driven | 25 |
| They speed,—a loftier vision dost thou seek? | |
| Rise then,—to Heaven! | | | | |
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