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
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,
Which through the summer is not heard nor 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
Descended, 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 humankind.
LINES WRITTEN IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI.
1. THE everlasting universe of Things
Flows through the Mind, and rolls its rapid waves, Now dark-now glittering-now reflecting gloomNow lending splendour, where from secret springs The 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,
Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river
Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves.
2. Thus thou, Ravine of Arve-dark, deep Ravine—
Thou many-coloured many-voiced vale,
Over whose pines and crags and caverns sail
Fast cloud-shadows and sunbeams; awful scene,
Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down
From the ice-gulfs that gird his secret throne,
Bursting through these dark mountains like the flame
Of lightning through the tempest ;-thou dost lie,—
Thy 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;
Thine earthly rainbows stretched across the sweep
Of the etherial waterfall, whose veil
Robes some unsculptured image; the strange sleep
Which, when the voices of the desert fail,
Wraps all in its own deep eternity;
Thy 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,
I seem, as in a trance sublime and strange,
To muse on my own separate fantasy,
My own, my human mind, which passively
Now renders and receives fast influencings,
Holding an unremitting interchange
With 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,
Seeking 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!
3. Some 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 and live. I look on high;
Has some unknown omnipotence unfurled
The veil of life and death? Or do I lie
In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep
Spread far around and inaccessiblyls
Its circles? for the very spirit faie,
Driven like a homeless cloud from step to steep
That vanishes among the viewless gales !
Far, 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,
Blue as the overhanging heaven, that spread
And wind among the accumulated steeps;
A desert peopled by the storms alone,
Save when the eagle brings some hunter's bone,
And the wolf tracks her there. How hideously
Its shapes are heaped around-rude, bare, and high,
Chastly and scarred and riven !-Is this the scene
Where the old Earthquake-dæmon taught her young
Ruin? were these their toys? or did a sea
Of fire envelop once this silent snow?
None 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.
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.
4. 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,
Slow 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 boundary of the skies
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 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
Rolls its loud waters to the ocean waves,
Breathes its swift vapours to the circling air.
5. 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.
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?
MARIANNE'S DREAM.
1. A PALE Dream came to a Lady fair, And said, "A boon, a boon, I pray! I know the secrets of the air;
And things are lost in the glare of day,
Which I can make the sleeping see
If they will put their trust in me.
"And thou shalt know of things unknown,
If thou wilt let me rest between
The veiny lids whose fringe is thrown
Over thine eyes so dark and sheen."
And half in hope and half in fright
The Lady closed her eyes so bright.
3. At first all deadly shapes were driven
Tumultuously across her sleep,
And o'er the vast cope of bending heaven
All ghastly-visaged clouds did sweep;
And the Lady ever looked to spy
If the golden sun shone forth on high.
4. And, as towards the east she turned,
She saw, aloft in the morning air
Which now with hues of sunrise burned,
A great black anchor rising there;
And wherever the Lady turned her eyes
It hung before her in the skies.
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