THOU monarch of the upper air, | |
| Thou mighty temple given | |
| For morning’s earliest of light, | |
| And evening’s last of heaven. | |
| The vapour from the marsh, the smoke | 5 |
| From crowded cities sent, | |
| Are purified before they reach | |
| Thy loftier element. | |
| Thy hues are not of earth but heaven; | |
| Only the sunset rose | 10 |
| Hath leave to fling a crimson dye | |
| Upon thy stainless snows. | |
| |
| Now out on those adventurers | |
| Who scaled thy breathless height, | |
| And made thy pinnacle, Mont Blanc, | 15 |
| A thing for common sight. | |
| Before that human step had left | |
| Its sully on thy brow, | |
| The glory of thy forehead made | |
| A shrine to those below: | 20 |
| Men gaz’d upon thee as a star, | |
| And turned to earth again, | |
| With dreams like thine own floating clouds, | |
| The vague but not the vain. | |
| No feelings are less vain than those | 25 |
| That bear the mind away, | |
| Till blent with nature’s mysteries | |
| It half forgets its clay. | |
| It catches loftier impulses; | |
| And owns a nobler power;— | 30 |
| The poet and philosopher | |
| Are born of such an hour. | |
| |
| But now where may we seek a place | |
| For any spirit’s dream; | |
| Our steps have been o’er every soil, | 35 |
| Our sails o’er every stream, | |
| Those isles, the beautiful Azores, | |
| The fortunate, the fair! | |
| We looked for their perpetual spring | |
| To find it was not there, | 40 |
| Bright El Dorado, land of gold, | |
| We have so sought for thee, | |
| There’s not a spot in all the globe | |
| Where such a land can be. | |
| |
| How pleasant were the wild beliefs | 45 |
| That dwelt in legends old, | |
| Alas! to our posterity | |
| Will no such tales be told. | |
| We know too much, scroll after scroll | |
| Weighs down our weary shelves; | 50 |
| Our only point of ignorance | |
| Is centred in ourselves. | |
| Alas! for thy past mystery, | |
| For thine untrodden snow, | |
| Nurse of the tempest, hast thou none | 55 |
| To guard thy outraged brow? | |
| Thy summit, once the unapproached, | |
| Hath human presence owned, | |
| With the first step upon thy crest | |
| Mont Blanc, thou wert dethroned. | 60 |
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