Nor could I forget

In this late portion of my argument

That scarcely had I finally resigned

My rights among those academic bowers

When thou wert thither guided. From the heart

Of London, and from cloisters there, thou cam'st

And didst sit down in temperance and peace,

A rigorous student. What a stormy course

Then followed – oh, it is a pang that calls

For utterance, to think how small a change

Of circumstances might to thee have spared

A world of pain, ripened ten thousand hopes

For ever withered. Through this retrospect

Of my own college life I still have had

Thy after-sojourn in the self-same place

Present before my eyes, have played with times

(I speak of private business of the thought)

And accidents as children do with cards,

Or as a man, who, when his house is built,

A frame locked up in wood and stone, doth still

In impotence of mind by his fireside

Rebuild it to his liking. I have thought

Of thee, thy learning, gorgeous eloquence,

And all the strength and plumage of thy youth,

Thy subtle speculations, toils abstruse

Among the schoolmen, and Platonic forms

Of wild ideal pageantry, shaped out

From things well-matched, or ill, and words for things –

The self-created sustenance of a mind

Debarred from Nature's living images,

Compelled to be a life unto itself,

And unrelentingly possessed by thirst

Of greatness, love, and beauty. Not alone,

Ah, surely not in singleness of heart

Should I have seen the light of evening fade

Upon the silent Cam, if we had met,

Even at that early time: I needs must hope,

Must feel, must trust, that my maturer age

And temperature less willing to be moved,

My calmer habits, and more steady voice,

Would with an influence benign have soothed

Or chased away the airy wretchedness

That battened on thy youth. But thou hast trod,

In watchful meditation thou hast trod,

A march of glory, which doth put to shame

These vain regrets; health suffers in thee, else

Such grief for thee would be the weakest thought

That ever harboured in the breast of man.

 

A passing word erewhile did lightly touch

On wanderings of my own, and now to these

My poem leads me with an easier mind.

The employments of three winters when I wore

A student's gown have been already told,

Or shadowed forth as far as there is need –

When the third summer brought its liberty

A fellow student and myself, he too

A mountaineer, together sallied forth,

And, staff in hand on foot pursued our way

Towards the distant Alps. An open slight

Of college cares and study was the scheme,

 

Nor entertained without concern for those

To whom my worldly interests were dear,

But Nature then was sovereign in my heart,

And mighty forms seizing a youthful fancy

Had given a charter to irregular hopes.

In any age, without an impulse sent

From work of nations and their goings-on,

I should have been possessed by like desire;

But 'twas a time when Europe was rejoiced,

France standing on the top of golden hours,

And human nature seeming born again.

Bound, as I said, to the Alps, it was our lot

To land at Calais on the very eve

Of that great federal day; and there we saw,

In a mean city and among a few,

How bright a face is worn when joy of one

Is joy of tens of millions. Southward thence

We took our way, direct through hamlets, towns,

Gaudy with reliques of that festival,

Flowers left to wither on triumphal arcs

And window-garlands. On the public roads –

And once three days successively through paths

By which our toilsome journey was abridged –

Among sequestered villages we walked

And found benevolence and blessedness

Spread like a fragrance everywhere, like spring

That leaves no corner of the land untouched.

Where elms for many and many a league in files,

With their thin umbrage, on the stately roads

Of that great kingdom rustled o'er our heads,

For ever near us as we paced along,

'Twas sweet at such a time – with such delights

On every side, in prime of youthful strength -

To feed a poet's tender melancholy

And fond conceit of sadness, to the noise

And gentle undulation which they made.

Unhoused beneath the evening star we saw

Dances of liberty, and, in late hours

Of darkness, dances in the open air.

Among the vine-clad hills of Burgundy,

Upon the bosom of the gentle Soane

We glided forward with the flowing stream:

Swift Rhone, thou wert the wings on which we cut

Between thy lofty rocks. Enchanting show

Those woods and farms and orchards did present,

And single cottages and lurking towns –

Reach after reach, procession without end,

Of deep and stately vales. A lonely pair

Of Englishmen we were, and sailed along

Clustered together with a merry crowd

Of those emancipated, with a host

Of travellers, chiefly delegates returning

From the great spousals newly solemnized

At their chief city, in the sight of Heaven.

Like bees they swarmed, gaudy and gay as bees;

Some vapoured in the unruliness of joy,

And flourished with their swords as if to fight

The saucy air. In this blithe company

We landed, took with them our evening meal,

Guests welcome almost as the angels were

To Abraham of old. The supper done,

With flowing cups elate and happy thoughts

We rose at signal given, and formed a ring,

And hand in hand danced round and round the board;

All hearts were open, every tongue was loud

With amity and glee. We bore a name

Honoured in France, the name of Englishmen,

And hospitably did they give us hail

As their forerunners in a glorious course;

And round and round the board they danced again.

 

With this same throng our voyage we pursued

At early dawn; the monastery bells

Made a sweet jingling in our youthful ears –

The rapid river flowing without noise –

And every spire we saw among the rocks

Spake with a sense of peace, at intervals

Touching the heart amid the boisterous crew

With which we were environed. Having parted

From this glad rout, the convent of Chartreuse

Received us two days afterwards, and there

We rested in an awful solitude –

Thence onward to the country of the Swiss.

 

'Tis not my present purpose to retrace

That variegated journey step by step;

A march it was of military speed,

And earth did change her images and forms

Before us fast as clouds are changed in heaven.

Day after day, up early and down late,

From vale to vale, from hill to hill we went,

From province on to province did we pass,

Keen hunters in a chace of fourteen weeks –

Eager as birds of prey, or as a ship

Upon the stretch when winds are blowing fair.

Sweet coverts did we cross of pastoral life,

Enticing vallies – greeted them, and left

Too soon, while yet the very flash and gleam

Of salutation were not passed away.

Oh, sorrow for the youth who could have seen

Unchastened, unsubdued, unawed, unraised

To patriarchal dignity of mind

And pure simplicity of wish and will,

Those sanctified abodes of peaceful man.

My heart leaped up when first I did look down

On that which was first seen of those deep haunts,

A green recess, an aboriginal vale,

Quiet, and lorded over and possessed

By nacked huts, wood-built, and sown like tents

Or Indian cabins over the fresh lawns

And by the river-side.

 

That day we first

Beheld the summit of Mount Blanc, and grieved

To have a soulless image on the eye

Which had usurped upon a living thought

That never more could be. The wondrous Vale

Of Chamouny did, on the following dawn,

With its dumb cataracts and streams of ice –

A motionless array of mighty waves,

Five rivers broad and vast – make rich amends,

And reconciled us to realities.

There small birds warble from the leafy trees,

The eagle soareth in the element,

There doth the reaper bind the yellow sheaf,

The maiden spread the haycock in the sun,

While Winter like a tamèd lion walks,

Descending from the mountain to make sport

Among the cottages by beds of flowers.

 

Whate'er in this wide circuit we beheld

Or heard was fitted to our unripe state

Of intellect and heart. By simple strains

Of feeling, the pure breath of real life,

We were not left untouched. With such a book

Before our eyes we could not chuse but read

A frequent lesson of sound tenderness,

The universal reason of mankind,

The truth of young and old. Nor, side by side

Pacing, two brother pilgrims, or alone

Each with his humour, could we fail to abound -

Craft this which hath been hinted at before -

In dreams and fictions pensively composed:

Dejection taken up for pleasure's sake,

And gilded sympathies, the willow wreath,

Even among those solitudes sublime,

And sober posies of funereal flowers,

Culled from the gardens of the Lady Sorrow,

Did sweeten many a meditative hour.

 

Yet still in me, mingling with these delights,

Was something of stern mood, an under-thirst

Of vigour, never utterly asleep.

Far different dejection once was mine –

A deep and genuine sadness then I felt –

The circumstances I will here relate

Even as they were. Upturning with a band

Of travellers, from the Valais we had clomb

Along the road that leads to Italy;

A length of hours, making of these our guides,

Did we advance, and, having reached an inn

Among the mountains, we together ate

Our noon's repast, from which the travellers rose

Leaving us at the board. Erelong we followed,

Descending by the beaten road that led

Right to a rivulet's edge, and there broke off;

The only track now visible was one

 

Upon the further side, right opposite,

And up a lofty mountain. This we took,

After a little scruple and short pause,

And climbed with eagerness – though not, at length,

Without surprize and some anxiety

On finding that we did not overtake

Our comrades gone before. By fortunate chance,

While every moment now encreased our doubts,

A peasant met us, and from him we learned

That to the place which had perplexed us first

We must descend, and there should find the road

Which in the stony channel of the stream

Lay a few steps, and then along its banks –

And further, that thenceforward all our course

Was downwards with the current of that stream.

Hard of belief, we questioned him again,

And all the answers which the man returned

To our inquiries, in their sense and substance

Translated by the feelings which we had,

Ended in this – that we had crossed the Alps.

 

Imagination! – lifting up itself

Before the eye and progress of my song

Like an unfathered vapour, here that power,

In all the might of its endowments, came

Athwart me. I was lost as in a cloud,

Halted without a struggle to break through,

And now, recovering, to my soul I say

'I recognise thy glory'. In such strength

Of usurpation, in such visitings

Of awful promise, when the light of sense

Goes out in flashes that have shewn to us

The invisible world, doth greatness make abode,

There harbours whether we be young or old.

Our destiny, our nature, and our home,

Is with infinitude – and only there;

With hope it is, hope that can never die,

Effort, and expectation, and desire,

And something evermore about to be.

The mind beneath such banners militant

Thinks not of spoils or trophies, nor of aught

That may attest its prowess, blest in thoughts

That are their own perfection and reward –

Strong in itself, and in the access of joy

Which hides it like the overflowing Nile.

 

The dull and heavy slackening which ensued

Upon those tidings by the peasant given

Was soon dislodged; downwards we hurried fast,

And entered with the road which we had missed

Into a narrow chasm. The brook and road

Were fellow-travellers in this gloomy pass,

And with them did we journey several hours

At a slow step. The immeasurable height

Of woods decaying, never to be decayed,

The stationary blasts of waterfalls,

And everywhere along the hollow rent

Winds thwarting winds, bewildered and forlorn,

The torrents shooting from the clear blue sky,

The rocks that muttered close upon our ears –

Black drizzling crags that spake by the wayside

As if a voice were in them – the sick sight

And giddy prospect of the raving stream,

The unfettered clouds and region of the heavens,

Tumult and peace, the darkness and the light,

Were all like workings of one mind, the features

Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree,

Characters of the great apocalypse,

The types and symbols of eternity,

Of first, and last, and midst, and without end.

 

That night our lodging was an alpine house,

An inn, or hospital (as they are named),

Standing in that same valley by itself,

And close upon the confluence of two streams –

A dreary mansion, large beyond all need,

With high and spacious rooms, deafened and stunned

By noise of waters, making innocent sleep

Lie melancholy among weary bones.

Uprisen betimes, our journey we renewed,

Led by the stream, ere noon-day magnified

Into a lordly river, broad and deep,

Dimpling along in silent majesty

With mountains for its neighbours, and in view

Of distant mountains and their snowy tops,

And thus proceeding to Locarno's lake,

Fit resting-place for such a visitant.

Locarno, spreading out in width like heaven,

And Como thou – a treasure by the earth

Kept to itself, a darling bosomed up

In Abyssinian privacy - I spake

Of thee, thy chestnut woods and garden plots

Of Indian corn tended by dark-eyed maids,

Thy lofty steeps, and pathways roofed with vines

Winding from house to house, from town to town

(Sole link that binds them to each other), walks

League after league, and cloistral avenues

Where silence is if music be not there:

While yet a youth undisciplined in verse,

Through fond ambition of my heart I told

Your praises, nor can I approach you now

Ungreeted by a more melodious song,

Where tones of learned art and Nature mixed

May frame enduring language. Like a breeze

Or sunbeam over your domain I passed

In motion without pause; but ye have left

Your beauty with me, an impassioned sight

Of colours and of forms, whose power is sweet

And gracious, almost, might I dare to say,

As virtue is, or goodness - sweet as love,

Or the remembrance of a noble deed,

Or gentlest visitations of pure thought

When God, the giver of all joy, is thanked

Religiously in silent blessedness –

Sweet as this last itself, for such it is.

 

Through those delightful pathways we advanced

Two days, and still in presence of the lake,

Which winding up among the Alps now changed

Slowly its lovely countenance and put on

A sterner character.