From yon remotest waste, have overthrown The limits of the dead and living world, Never to be reclaimed. The dwelling-place Of 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, And their place is not known. Below, vast caves Shine in the rushing torrent's restless gleam, Which from those secret chasms in tumult dwelling Meet in the vale, and one majestic River,
The breath and blood of distant lands, for ever Rolls it sloud waters to the ocean waves,
Breathes its swift vapours to the circling air.
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. In 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 Silently 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 Which 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?
Switzerland, June 23, 1816.
But for such faith which nature reconciled; Thou 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.
The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams, Ocean, and all the living things that dwell Within the dædal 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 Holds 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 Are 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 primæval mountains, Teach the adverting mind. The glaciers creep
Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains,
Slowly rolling on; there, many a precipice Frost and the Sun in scorn of mortal power Have piled--dome, pyramid, and pinnacle, A 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 Its 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 Of 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, And their place is not known. Below, vast caves Shine in the rushing torrent's restless gleam, Which from those secret chasms in tumult dwelling Meet in the vale, and one majestic River,
The breath and blood of distant lands, for ever Rolls it sloud waters to the ocean waves, Breathes its swift vapours to the circling air.
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. In 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 Silently 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 Which 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?
Switzerland, June 23, 1816.
ON THE MEDUSA OF LEONARDO DA VINCI,
IN THE FLORENTINE GALLERY.
Ir lieth, gazing on the midnight sky, Upon the cloudy mountain peak supine; Below, far lands are seen tremblingly; Its horror and its beauty are divine. Upon its lips and eyelids seems to lie Loveliness like a shadow, from which shine, Fiery and lurid, struggling underneath, The agonies of anguish and of death.
Yet it is less the horror than the grace Which turns the gazer's spirit into stone; Whereon the lineaments of that dead face
Are graven, till the characters be grown Into itself, and thought no more can trace;
"Tis the melodious hue of beauty thrown Athwart the darkness and the glare of pain, Which humanize and harmonize the strain.
And from its head as from one body grow, As [ grass out of a watery rock, Hairs which are vipers, and they curl and flow And their long tangles in each other lock, And with unending involutions show
Their mailed radiance, as it were to mock
The torture and the death within, and saw The solid air with many a ragged jaw.
And from a stone beside a poisonous eft Peeps idly into those Gorgonian eyes; Whilst in the air a ghastly bat, bereft
Of sense, has flitted with a mad surprise Out of the cave this hideous light had cleft, And he comes hastening like a moth that hies After a taper; and the midnight sky Flares, a light more dread than obscurity.
'Tis the tempestuous loveliness of terror; For from the serpents gleams a brazen glare Kindled by that inextricable error
Which makes a thrilling vapour of the air Become a [
] and ever-shifting mirror
Of all the beauty and the terror there-
A woman's countenance, with serpent locks, Gazing in death on heaven from those wet rocks. Florence, 1819.
RARELY, rarely, comes thou,
Spirit of Delight!
Wherefore hast thou left me now
Many a day and night?
Many a weary night and day "Tis since thou art fled away.
How shall ever one like me Win thee back again?
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