[Besides the rivers Arve and Arveiron, which have their sources in the
foot of Mont Blanc, five conspicuous torrents rush down its sides; and,
within a few paces of the glaciers, the Gentiana Major grows in immense
numbers, with its ‘flowers of loveliest blue.’]
“Hast thou a charm to stay the Morning Star
In his steep course? so long he seems to pause
On thy bald, awful head, O Sovran Blanc?
The Arve and Arveiron at thy base
Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful form!
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently! Around thee and above,
Deep is the air, and dark, substantial, black;
An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it
As with a wedge! But when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from Eternity!
“O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee,
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,
Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer
I worshiped the Invisible alone.
“Yet, like some sweet, beguiling melody,
So sweet, we know not we are listening to it,
Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought,
Yea, with my life, and life’s own secret joy,
Till the dilating Soul, enrapt, transfused,
Into the mighty vision passing,—there,
As in her natural form, swelled vast to heaven!
“Awake my Soul! not only passive praise
Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears,
Mute thanks and secret ecstacy! Awake,
Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake!
Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my hymn.
“Thou first and chief, sole sovran of the vale
Oh, struggling with the darkness all night long,
And all night visited by troops of stars,
Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink!
Companion of the morning star at dawn,
Thyself earth’s rosy star, and of the dawn
Coherald: wake, oh wake, and utter praise!
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?
“And you, ye five wild torrents, fiercely glad!
Who called you forth from night and utter death,
From dark and icy caverns called you forth,
Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks,
Forever shattered, and the same forever?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,
Your strength, your speed, your fury and your joy,
Unceasing thunder and eternal foam?
And who commanded (and the silence came,)
Here let the billows stiffen and have rest?
“Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain’s brow,
Adown enormous ravines slope amain—
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once, amidst their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!
Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers
Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?
GOD! let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, GOD!
GOD! sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice!
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they, too, have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, GOD!
“Ye living flowers, that skirt the eternal frost!
Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle’s nest!
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain-storm!
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
Ye signs and wonders of the elements!
Utter forth GOD! and fill the hills with praise!
“Thou, too, hoar Mount, with thy sky-pointing peaks,
Oft from whose feet, the avalanche, unheard,
Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene
Into the depths of clouds, that vail thy breast;
Thou too again, stupendous mountain! thou,
That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low
In adoration, upward from thy base
Slow traveling with dim eyes suffused with tears,
Solemnly seemest, like a vapory cloud,
To rise before me,—Rise, oh ever rise!
Rise, like a cloud of incense, from the earth!
Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills,
Thou dread embassador from Earth to Heaven,
Great Hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God!
“Thanks to thee, thou noble poet, for giving this glorious voice to
Alpine nature, for so befitting and not unworthy an interpretation of
Nature’s own voice, in words of our own mother-tongue. Thanks to God for
his grace vouchsafed to thee, so that now thou praisest Him amidst the
infinite host of flaming seraphs, before the mount supreme of glory,
where all the empyrean rings with angelic hallelujahs! The creation of
such a mind as Coleridge’s, is only outdone by its redemption through
the blood of the Lamb. Oh, who can tell the rapture of a soul, that
could give a voice for nations to such a mighty burst of praise to God
in this world, when its powers, uplifted in eternity, and dilated with
absorbing, unmingled, unutterable love, shall pour themselves forth in
the anthem of redemption, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain!”