Her mien had been imperious, but she now
Looked meek-perhaps remorse had brought her low. Her coming made him better, and they stayed Together at my father's-for I played As I remember with the lady's shawl- I might be six years old—but after all
She left him " "Why, her heart must have been tough:
"And was not this enough?
They met they parted”—“Child, is there no more?" "Something within that interval which bore The stamp of why they parted, how they met :
Yet if thine agèd eyes disdain to wet
Those wrinkled cheeks with youth's remembered tears, Ask me no more, but let the silent years Be closed and cered over their memory
As yon mute marble where their corpses lie." I urged and questioned still, she told me how
All happened—but the cold world shall not know.
LINES WRITTEN IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI.
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 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.
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 gulphs that gird his secret throne, Bursting through these dark mountains like the flame Of lightning thro' 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 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;—
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 phantasy, 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!
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 inaccessibly
Its circles? For the very spirit fails,
Driven like a homeless cloud from steep 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 desart 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,
Ghastly, 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 envelope 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.
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 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
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