Lo! where the pass expands
Its stony jaws, the abrupt mountain breaks,
And seems, with its accumulated crags,
To overhang the world: for wide expand
Beneath the wan stars and descending moon
555Islanded seas, blue mountains, mighty streams,
Dim tracts and vast, robed in the lustrous gloom
Of leaden-coloured even, and fiery hills
Mingling their flames with twilight, on the verge
Of the remote horizon. The near scene,
560In naked and severe simplicity,
Made contrast with the universe. A pine,
Rock-rooted, stretched athwart the vacancy
Its swinging boughs, to each inconstant blast
Yielding one only response, at each pause
565In most familiar cadence, with the howl
The thunder and the hiss of homeless streams
Mingling its solemn song, whilst the broad river,
Foaming and hurrying o’er its rugged path,
Fell into that immeasurable void
570Scattering its waters to the passing winds.
Yet the gray precipice and solemn pine
And torrent, were not all;—one silent nook
Was there. Even on the edge of that vast mountain,
Upheld by knotty roots and fallen rocks,
575It overlooked in its serenity
The dark earth, and the bending vault of stars.
It was a tranquil spot, that seemed to smile
Even in the lap of horror. Ivy clasped
The fissured stones with its entwining arms,
580And did embower with leaves for ever green,
And berries dark, the smooth and even space
Of its inviolated floor, and here
The children of the autumnal whirlwind bore,
In wanton sport, those bright leaves, whose decay,
585Red, yellow, or etherially pale,
Rivals the pride of summer. ’Tis the haunt
Of every gentle wind, whose breath can teach
The wilds to love tranquillity. One step,
One human step alone, has ever broken
590The stillness of its solitude:—one voice
Alone inspired its echoes;—even that voice
Which hither came, floating among the winds,
And led the loveliest among human forms
To make their wild haunts the depository
595Of all the grace and beauty that endued
Its motions, render up its majesty,
Scatter its music on the unfeeling storm,
And to the damp leaves and blue cavern mould,
Nurses of rainbow flowers and branching moss,
600Commit the colours of that varying cheek,
That snowy breast, those dark and drooping eyes.
The dim and horned moon hung low, and poured
A sea of lustre on the horizon’s verge
That overflowed its mountains. Yellow mist
605Filled the unbounded atmosphere, and drank
Wan moonlight even to fullness: not a star
Shone, not a sound was heard; the very winds,
Danger’s grim playmates, on that precipice
Slept, clasped in his embrace.—O, storm of death!
610Whose sightless speed divides this sullen night:
And thou, colossal Skeleton, that, still
Guiding its irresistible career
In thy devastating omnipotence,
Art king of this frail world, from the red field
615Of slaughter, from the reeking hospital,
The patriot’s sacred couch, the snowy bed
Of innocence, the scaffold and the throne,
A mighty voice invokes thee. Ruin calls
His brother Death. A rare and regal prey
620He hath prepared, prowling around the world;
Glutted with which thou mayst repose, and men
Go to their graves like flowers or creeping worms,
Nor ever more offer at thy dark shrine
The unheeded tribute of a broken heart.
625 When on the threshold of the green recess
The wanderer’s footsteps fell, he knew that death
Was on him. Yet a little, ere it fled,
Did he resign his high and holy soul
To images of the majestic past,
630That paused within his passive being now,
Like winds that bear sweet music, when they breathe
Through some dim latticed chamber. He did place
His pale lean hand upon the rugged trunk
Of the old pine. Upon an ivied stone
635Reclined his languid head, his limbs did rest,
Diffused and motionless, on the smooth brink
Of that obscurest chasm;—and thus he lay,
Surrendering to their final impulses
The hovering powers of life. Hope and despair,
640The torturers, slept; no mortal pain or fear
Marred his repose, the influxes of sense,
And his own being unalloyed by pain,
Yet feebler and more feeble, calmly fed
The stream of thought, till he lay breathing there
645At peace, and faintly smiling:—his last sight
Was the great moon, which o’er the western line
Of the wide world her mighty horn suspended,
With whose dun beams inwoven darkness seemed
To mingle. Now upon the jagged hills
650It rests, and still as the divided frame
Of the vast meteor sunk, the Poet’s blood,
That ever beat in mystic sympathy
With nature’s ebb and flow, grew feebler still:
And when two lessening points of light alone
655Gleamed through the darkness, the alternate gasp
Of his faint respiration scarce did stir
The stagnate night:—till the minutest ray
Was quenched, the pulse yet lingered in his heart.
It paused—it fluttered. But when heaven remained
660Utterly black, the murky shades involved
An image, silent, cold, and motionless,
As their own voiceless earth and vacant air.
Even as a vapour fed with golden beams
That ministered on sunlight, ere the west
665Eclipses it, was now that wonderous frame—
No sense, no motion, no divinity—
A fragile lute, on whose harmonious strings
The breath of heaven did wander—a bright stream
Once fed with many-voiced waves—a dream
670Of youth, which night and time have quenched for ever,
Still, dark, and dry, and unremembered now.
O, for Medea’s wondrous alchemy,
Which wheresoe’er it fell made the earth gleam
With bright flowers, and the wintry boughs exhale
675From vernal blooms fresh fragrance! O, that God,
Profuse of poisons, would concede the chalice
Which but one living man has drained, who now,
Vessel of deathless wrath, a slave that feels
No proud exemption in the blighting curse
680He bears, over the world wanders for ever,
Lone as incarnate death! O, that the dream
Of dark magician in his visioned cave,
Raking the cinders of a crucible
For life and power, even when his feeble hand
685Shakes in its last decay, were the true law
Of this so lovely world! But thou art fled
Like some frail exhalation; which the dawn
Robes in its golden beams,—ah! thou hast fled!
The brave, the gentle, and the beautiful,
690The child of grace and genius. Heartless things
Are done and said i’ the world, and many worms
And beasts and men live on, and mighty Earth
From sea and mountain, city and wilderness,
In vesper low or joyous orison,
695Lifts still its solemn voice:—but thou art fled—
Thou canst no longer know or love the shapes
Of this phantasmal scene, who have to thee
Been purest ministers, who are, alas!
Now thou art not. Upon those pallid lips
700So sweet even in their silence, on those eyes
That image sleep in death, upon that form
Yet safe from the worm’s outrage, let no tear
Be shed—not even in thought. Nor, when those hues
Are gone, and those divinest lineaments,
705Worn by the senseless wind, shall live alone
In the frail pauses of this simple strain,
Let not high verse, mourning the memory
Of that which is no more, or painting’s woe
Or sculpture, speak in feeble imagery
710Their own cold powers. Art and eloquence,
And all the shews o’ the world are frail and vain
To weep a loss that turns their lights to shade.
It is a woe too ‘deep for tears,’ when all
Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit,
715Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves
Those who remain behind, not sobs or groans,
The passionate tumult of a clinging hope;
But pale despair and cold tranquillity,
Nature’s vast frame, the web of human things,
720Birth and the grave, that are not as they were.
Verses written on receiving a Celandine in a letter from England
I thought of thee, fair Celandine,
As of a flower aery blue
Yet small—thy leaves methought were wet
With the light of morning dew;
5In the same glen thy star did shine
As the primrose and the violet,
And the wild briar bent over thee
And the woodland brook danced under thee.
Lovely thou wert in thine own glen
10 Ere thou didst dwell in song or story,
Ere the moonlight of a Poet’s mind
Had arrayed thee with the glory
Whose fountains are the hearts of men—
Many a thing of vital kind
15Had fed and sheltered under thee,
Had nourished their thoughts near to thee.
Yes, gentle flower, in thy recess
None might a sweeter aspect wear:
Thy young bud drooped so gracefully,
20 Thou wert so very fair—
Among the fairest ere the stress
Of exile, death and injury
Thus withering and deforming thee
Had made a mournful type of thee;
25A type of that whence I and thou
Are thus familiar, Celandine—
A deathless Poet whose young prime
Was as serene as thine,
But he is changed and withered now,
30Fallen on a cold and evil time;
His heart is gone—his fame is dim
And Infamy sits mocking him.
Celandine! Thou art pale and dead,
Changed from thy fresh and woodland state.
35Oh! that thy bard were cold, but he
Has lived too long and late.
Would he were in an honoured grave,
But that, men say, now must not be
Since he for impious gold could sell
40The love of those who loved him well.
That he, with all hope else of good,
Should be thus transitory
I marvel not—but that his lays
Have spared not their own glory,
45That blood, even the foul god of blood,
With most inexpiable praise,
Freedom and truth left desolate,
He has been bought to celebrate!
They were his hopes which he doth scorn,
50 They were his foes the fight that won;
That sanction and that condemnation
Are now forever gone.
They need them not! Truth may not mourn
That with a liar’s inspiration
55Her majesty he did disown
Ere he could overlive his own.
They need them not, for Liberty,
Justice and philosophic truth
From his divine and simple song
60 Shall draw immortal youth
When he and thou shall cease to be,
Or be some other thing, so long
As men may breathe or flowers may blossom
O’er the wide Earth’s maternal bosom.
65The stem whence thou wert disunited
Since thy poor self was banished hither,
Now by that priest of Nature’s care
Who sent thee forth to wither
His window with its blooms has lighted,
70And I shall see thy brethren there,
And each like thee will aye betoken
Love sold, hope dead, and honour broken.
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty
[Version A]
1
The awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats tho’ unseen amongst us,—visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower.—
5Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,
It visits with inconstant glance
Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies of evening,—
Like clouds in starlight widely spread,—
10 Like memory of music fled,—
Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.
2
Spirit of BEAUTY, that doth consecrate
With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon
15 Of human thought or form,—where art thou gone?
Why dost thou pass away and leave our state,
This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?
Ask why the sunlight not forever
Weaves rainbows o’er yon mountain river,
20Why aught should fail and fade that once is shewn,
Why fear and dream and death and birth
Cast on the daylight of this earth
Such gloom,—why man has such a scope
For love and hate, despondency and hope?
3
25No voice from some sublimer world hath ever
To sage or poet these responses given—
Therefore the name of God and ghosts, and Heaven,
Remain the records of their vain endeavour,
Frail spells—whose uttered charm might not avail to sever,
30 From all we hear and all we see,
Doubt, chance, and mutability.
Thy light alone—like mist o’er mountains driven,
Or music by the night wind sent
Thro’ strings of some still instrument,
35 Or moonlight on a midnight stream,
Gives grace and truth to life’s unquiet dream.
4
Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds depart
And come, for some uncertain moments lent.
Man were immortal, and omnipotent,
40Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art,
Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart.
Thou messenger of sympathies,
That wax and wane in lovers’ eyes—
Thou—that to human thought art nourishment,
45 Like darkness to a dying flame!
Depart not as thy shadow came,
Depart not—lest the grave should be,
Like life and fear, a dark reality.
5
While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped
50 Thro’ many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.
I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed,
I was not heard—I saw them not—
55 When musing deeply on the lot
Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing
All vital things that wake to bring
News of buds and blossoming,—
Sudden, thy shadow fell on me;
60I shrieked, and clasped my hands in extacy!
6
I vowed that I would dedicate my powers
To thee and thine—have I not kept the vow?
With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now
I call the phantoms of a thousand hours
65Each from his voiceless grave: they have in visioned bowers
Of studious zeal or love’s delight
Outwatched with me the envious night—
They know that never joy illumed my brow
Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free
70 This world from its dark slavery,
That thou—O awful LOVELINESS,
Wouldst give whate’er these words cannot express.
7
The day becomes more solemn and serene
When noon is past—there is a harmony
75 In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,
Which thro’ the summer is not heard or seen,
As if it could not be, as if it had not been!
Thus let thy power, which like the truth
Of nature on my passive youth
80Descended, to my onward life supply
Its calm—to one who worships thee,
And every form containing thee,
Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind
To fear himself, and love all human kind.
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty
[Version B]
1
The Lovely shadow of some awful Power
Walks though unseen amongst us, visiting
This peopled world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower,
5Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower
It visits with a wavering glance
Each human heart & countenance;—
Like hues and harmonies of evening—
Like clouds in starlight widely spread
10 Like memory of music fled
Like aught that for its grace might be
Dear, & yet dearer for its mystery.
2
Shadow of Beauty!—that doth consecrate
With thine own hues all thou dost fall upon
15 Of human thought or form, Where art thou gone
Why dost thou pass away & leave our state
A dark deep vale of tears, vacant & desolate?
Ask why the sun light not forever
Weaves rainbows o’er yon mountain river
20Ask why aught fades away that once is shewn
Ask wherefore dream & death & birth
Cast on the daylight of this earth
Such gloom,—why man has such a scope
For love & joy despondency & hope.
3
25No voice from some sublimer world hath ever
To wisest poets these responses given
Therefore the name of God & Ghosts & Heaven
Remain yet records of their vain Endeavour—
Frail spells, whose uttered charm might not avail to sever
30 From what we feel & what we see
Doubt, Chance & mutability.
Thy shade alone like mists o’er mountains driven
Or Music by the night-wind sent
Thro’ strings of some mute instrument
35Or Moonlight on a forest stream
Gives truth & grace to life’s tumultuous dream
4
Love, hope & self-esteem like clouds depart—
And come, for some uncertain moments lent.—
Man were immortal & omnipotent
40Didst thou, unknown & awful as thou art
Keep with this glorious train firm state within his heart.
Thou messenger of sympathies
That wax & wane in lovers’ eyes
Thou that to the poets thought art nourishment
45 As darkness to a dying flame
Depart not as thy shadow came!
Depart not!—lest the grave should be
Like life & fear a dark reality
5
While yet a boy I sought for Ghosts, & sped
50 Thro’ many a lonely chamber, vault & ruin
And starlight wood, with fearful step pursuing
Hopes of strange converse with the storied dead
I called on that false name with which our youth is fed
He heard me not—I saw them not—
55 When musing deeply on the lot
Of Life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing
All vocal things that live to bring
News of buds & blossoming—
Sudden thy shadow fell on me
60I shrieked & clasped my hands in extasy.
6
I vowed that I would dedicate my powers
To thee & thine—have I not kept the vow?
With streaming eyes & panting heart even now
I call the spectres of a thousand hours
65Each from his voiceless grave, who have in visioned bowers
Of studious zeal or love’s delight
Outwatched with me the waning night
To tell that never joy illumed my brow
Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free
70 This world from its dark slavery
That thou, O, awful Loveliness!
Would give whate’er these words cannot express.
7
The day becomes more solemn & serene
When Noon is past—there is a harmony
75 In Autumn & a lustre in the sky
Which thro’ the summer is not heard or seen
As if it could not be—as if it had not been—
Thus let thy shade—which like the truth
Of Nature on my passive youth
80Descended, to my onward life supply
Its hues, to one that worships thee
And every form containing thee
Whom fleeting power! thy spells did bind
To fear himself & love all human Kind.
Mont Blanc
[Version A]
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 splendour, where from secret springs
5The source of human thought its tribute brings
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 for ever,
10Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river
Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves.
II
Thus thou, Ravine of Arve—dark, deep Ravine—
Thou many-coloured, many-voiced vale,
Over whose pines, and crags, and caverns sail
15Fast cloud shadows and sunbeams: awful scene,
Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down
From the ice gulphs that gird his secret throne,
Bursting through these dark mountains like the flame
Of lightning thro’ the tempest;—thou dost lie,
20Thy giant brood of pines around thee clinging,
Children of elder time, in whose devotion
The chainless winds still come and ever came
To drink their odours, and their mighty swinging
To hear—an old and solemn harmony;
25Thine earthly rainbows stretched across the sweep
Of the ethereal waterfall, whose veil
Robes some unsculptured image; the strange sleep
Which when the voices of the desart fail
Wraps all in its own deep eternity;—
30Thy caverns echoing to the Arve’s commotion,
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
35I seem as in a trance sublime and strange
To muse on my own separate phantasy,
My own, my human mind, which passively
Now renders and receives fast influencings,
Holding an unremitting interchange
40With the clear universe of things around;
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,
45Seeking among the shadows that pass by,
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!
III
Some say that gleams of a remoter world
50Visit the soul in sleep,—that death is slumber,
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
55In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep
Spread 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!
60Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky,
Mont Blanc appears,—still, snowy, and serene—
Its subject mountains their unearthly forms
Pile around it, ice and rock; broad vales between
Of frozen floods, unfathomable deeps,
65Blue as the overhanging heaven, that spread
And wind among the accumulated steeps;
A desart peopled by the storms alone,
Save when the eagle brings some hunter’s bone,
And the wolf tracts her there—how hideously
70Its shapes are heaped around! rude, bare, and high,
Ghastly, and scarred, and riven.—Is this the scene
Where the old Earthquake-daemon taught her young
Ruin? Were these their toys? or did a sea
Of fire, envelope once this silent snow?
75None can reply—all seems eternal now.
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;
80Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal
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.
IV
The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams,
85Ocean, and all the living things that dwell
Within the daedal 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
90Holds every future leaf and flower;—the bound
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
95Are born and die; revolve, subside and swell.
Power dwells apart in its tranquillity
Remote, serene, and inaccessible:
And this, the naked countenance of earth,
On which I gaze, even these primaeval mountains
100Teach the adverting mind. The glaciers creep
Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains,
Slow rolling on; there, many a precipice,
Frost and the Sun in scorn of mortal power
Have piled: dome, pyramid, and pinnacle,
105A city of death, distinct with many a tower
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
110Its destined path, or in the mangled soil
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
115Of insects, beasts, and birds, becomes its spoil;
Their food and their retreat for ever 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,
120And their place is not known. Below, vast caves
Shine in the rushing torrents’ 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, for ever
125Rolls its loud waters to the ocean waves,
Breathes its swift vapours to the circling air.
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.
130In the calm darkness of the moonless nights,
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
135Silently there, and heap the snow with breath
Rapid and strong, but silently! Its home
The voiceless lightning in these solitudes
Keeps innocently, and like vapour broods
Over the snow. The secret strength of things
140Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome
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?
Mont Blanc
[Version B]
Scene—Pont Pellisier in the vale of Servox
In day the eternal universe of things
Flows through the mind, & rolls its rapid waves
Now dark, now glittering; now reflecting gloom
Now lending splendour, where, from secret caves
5The source of human thought its tribute brings
Of waters, with a sound not all it’s own:
Such as a feeble brook will oft assume
In the wild woods among the mountains lone
Where waterfalls around it leap forever
10Where winds & woods contend, & a vast river
Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves
Thus thou Ravine of Arve, dark deep ravine,
Thou many coloured, many voiced vale!
Over whose rocks & pines & caverns sail
15Fast cloud shadows & sunbeams—awful scene,
Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down
From the ice gulphs that gird his secret throne
Bursting through these dark mountains like the flame
Of lightning thro the tempest—thou dost lie
20Thy giant brood of pines around thee clinging
Children of elder time, in whose devotion
The charmed winds still come, & ever came
To drink thier odours, & thier mighty swinging
To hear, an old and solemn harmony;
25Thine earthly rainbows stretched across the sweep
Of the aerial waterfall, whose veil
Robes some unsculptured image; even the sleep
The sudden pause that does inhabit thee
Which when the voices of the desart fail
30And its hues wane, doth blend them all & steep
Thier periods in its own eternity;
Thy caverns echoing to the Arve’s commotion
A loud lone sound no other sound can tame:
Thou art pervaded with such ceaseless motion
35Thou art the path of that unresting sound
Ravine of Arve! & when I gaze on thee
I seem as in a vision deep & strange
To muse on my own various phantasy
My own, my human mind . . which passively
40Now renders & recieves fast influencings
Holding an unforeseeing interchange
With the clear universe of things around:
A legion of swift thoughts, whose wandering wings
Now float above thy darkness, & now rest
45Near the still cave of the witch Poesy
Seeking among the shadows that pass by,
Ghosts of the things that are, some form like thee,
Some spectre, some faint image; till the breast
From which they fled recalls them—thou art there
50Some say that gleams of a remoter world
Visit the soul in sleep—that death is slumber
And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber
Of those who wake & live. I look on high
Has some unknown omnipotence unfurled
55The vail of life & death? or do I lie
In dream, & does the mightier world of sleep
Spread far around, & inaccessibly
Its circles?—for the very spirit fails
Driven like a homeless cloud from steep to steep
60That vanishes among the viewless gales.—
Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky
Mont Blanc appears, still, snowy & serene,
Its subject mountains thier unearthly forms
Pile round it—ice & rock—broad chasms between
65Of frozen waves, unfathomable deeps
Blue as the overhanging Heaven, that spread
And wind among the accumulated steeps,
Vast desarts, peopled by the storms alone
Save when the eagle brings some hunter’s bone
70And the wolf watches her—how hideously
Its rocks are heaped around, rude bare & high
Ghastly & scarred & riven!—is this the scene
Where the old Earthquake demon taught her young
Ruin? were these thier toys? or did a sea
75Of fire envelope once this silent snow?
None can reply—all seems eternal now.
This wilderness has a mysterious tongue
Which teaches awful doubt, or faith so mild
So simple, so serene that man may be
80In such a faith with Nature reconciled.
Ye have a doctrine Mountains to repeal
Large codes of fraud & woe—not understood
By all, but which the wise & great & good
Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel.
85The fields, the lakes, the forests & the streams
Ocean, & all the living things that dwell
Within the dædal Earth, lightning & rain,
Earthquake & lava flood & hurricane—
The torpor of the year, when feeble dreams
90Visit the hidden buds, or dreamless sleep
Holds every future leaf & flower—the bound
With which from that detested trance they leap;
The works & ways of man, thier death & birth
And that of him, & all that his may be,
95All things that move & breathe with toil & sound
Are born & die, revolve subside & swell—
Power dwells apart in deep tranquillity,
Remote, sublime, & inaccessible,
And this, the naked countenance of Earth
100On which I gaze—even these primæval mountains
Teach the adverting mind.—the Glaciers creep
Like snakes that watch thier prey, from thier far fountains
Slow rolling on:—there, many a precipice
Frost & the Sun in scorn of human power
105Have piled: dome, pyramid & pinnacle
A city of death, distinct with many a tower
And wall impregnable of shining ice … .
A city’s phantom … but a flood of ruin
Is there, that from the boundaries of the sky
110Rolls its eternal stream . . vast pines are strewing
Its destined path, or in the mangled soil
Branchless & shattered stand—the rocks drawn down
From yon remotest waste have overthrown
The limits of the dead & living world
115Never to be reclaimed—the dwelling place
Of insects beasts & birds becomes its spoil,
Thier food & thier retreat for ever gone
So much of life & joy is lost—the race
Of man flies far in dread.
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