| |
| VOICE of the river running through Chamonix, | |
| Long had I heard it, running through Chamonix, | |
| With ears that heard not rivers and rivulets | |
| Close to me running, calling or whispering, | |
| For the voice of the river running through Chamonix. | 5 |
| To-day I hear it with ears that dream not: | |
| Even as I listen ’tis Arve no longer, | |
| But the voice of the mountain, the voice of Mónt-Blanc. | |
| Mountain of mountains, Europe’s mystery, | |
| Brow of Minos calm and terrible, | 10 |
| Brow of Minos giving judgement, | |
| Calm and white and smooth and terrible. | |
| The voice of Mónt-Blanc:—‘They struggle upwards, | |
| Reaching up, the other mountains, | |
| Up and up they strain around me, | 15 |
| Up with horn and peak and needle, | |
| Storm’d round by hurricane, splinter’d by lightning, | |
| Split by the deadly assiduous ice-wedge, | |
| The riving, rending, cleaving crystal, | |
| The diamond fang no rock can mollify, | 20 |
| That loosens block and crumbles surface, | |
| Till the mountain-tops bow and bend and thunder, | |
| Or, atom by atom drawn down, to the valleys, | |
| Are the sands of Time’s hour-glass and steal with the centuries, | |
| And ever I watch them sharpening and dwindling, | 25 |
| Changing in aeons as clouds in minutes. | |
| Ages and ages, millions of ages | |
| Ago, I sign’d to the snow to cover me; | |
| Drew my soft snow-armour about me; | |
| Struck a league with the ice for ever; | 30 |
| Made my friend of the foe of the mountains. | |
| Therefore I change not: sword of sunlight, | |
| Arrow of moonlight, reach me never; | |
| I change not ever: calm my forehead, | |
| Smooth my brow as the brow of ocean; | 35 |
| Therefore as ocean I change not and change not, | |
| Till heaven above or earth change beneath me.’ | |
| (Not the iron, the steel, the adamant, | |
| Not the rock or whatever is harder, | |
| Not these are strong to face eternity, | 40 |
| But the soft, soft snow and the fleeting water. | |
| Not iron will, steel-temper of intellect | |
| Shall endure and dominate saved humanity, | |
| But weakest forms and gentlest essences, | |
| Looks of kindness, touches of tenderness, | 45 |
| And the soft, soft fall of loving syllables.) | |
| |
| The voice of Mónt-Blanc:—‘Of those the atomies, | |
| Mites and motes and specks of mortality, | |
| That crawl up snow and writhe up precipice, | |
| Intruding life on my lifeless solitudes— | 50 |
| Some I accept to kiss my forehead, | |
| Some I let fall from knee or shoulder— | |
| Footslip or spit of stone or avalanche, | |
| They are quiet at last and life ceases to cumber me; | |
| Or wandering the snow-field in darkness and doubting, | 55 |
| Will sapp’d and joint and sinew melting, | |
| They despair of the way and will wait for the morning; | |
| And they breathe the drowsy breath of the ice-wind,— | |
| And long-forgotten dreams entangle them, | |
| And far-off long-lost scenes bewilder them, | 60 |
| Field and hedge-row, wood and watercourse— | |
| And they pace and tramp and circle a little, | |
| Then sleep a little, then sleep for ever. | |
| Lo, I deliver a Minos judgement: | |
| I am death; life never had part or lot in me.’ | 65 |
| |
| Voice of the river running through Chamonix, | |
| Mountain that usest the voice of the river, | |
| Through life I have heard you, in death I shall hear. | |
| |
