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
Spread1 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!

55

Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky,

60

Mont Blanc appears,-still, snowy, and serene-
Its subject mountains their unearthly forms

Pile around 2 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,

3

And the wolf tracks her there-how hideously

65

Its shapes are heaped around! rude, bare, and high, 70 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,

75

So solemn, so serene, that man may be
But for such faith with nature reconciled;
Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal

1 Speed in Mrs. Shelley's editions of 1839.

2 Soin Shelley's and all authoritative editions; but I suspect a printer's error for round.

3 Tracts in Shelley's edition. Mr.

80

Garnett tells me that in an extant MS., a draft mainly in pencil, this passage stands and the wolf watches her.

4 In the draft inspected by Mr. Garnett this passage stands In such a faith.

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.

IV.

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;

85

90

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:

95

And this, the naked countenance of earth,

On which I gaze, even these primæval mountains

Teach the adverting mind. The glaciers creep

100

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 2
Rolls its perpetual stream; vast pines are strewing

1 Mrs. Shelley improves the grammar at the expense of the rhythm, by substituting slowly for slow, in her editions of 1839.

2 Mr. Rossetti substitutes boundary

105

of the skies for boundaries of the sky, and secures a bad rhyme between ice and skies, but, as it seems to me, without advantage.

Its destined path, or in the mangled soil

110

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's1 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.

V.

Mont Blanc yet gleams on high:-the power is there, The still and solemn power of many sights,

115

120

125

130

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

Mr. Rossetti substitutes torrents'. Of course the grammar of this reading is right; but it is questionable whe

135

ther Shelley would ever have made such a change.

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?

July1 23, 1816.

140

CANCELLED PASSAGE OF MONT BLANC.2

There is a voice, not understood by all,
Sent from these desert-caves. It is the roar
Of the rent ice-cliff which the sunbeams call,
Plunging into the vale-it is the blast
Descending on the pines-the torrents pour. . . .

1 June in Shelley's and Mrs. Shelley's editions; but the 23rd of June was the date of the excursion from Montalegre to Hermance and Nerni. It was not till the 21st of July that Shelley and his party entered the Vale of Chamouni,-not till the 23rd that he saw from the source of the Arveiron the glacier of Montanvert,

and visited in the evening the glacier of Boisson, whence he returned the same evening to Chamouni. The poem may have been first written down either in sight of the glacier of Boisson, or at Chamouni.

2 From Garnett's Relics of Shelley, p. 75.

Mont Blanc being the concluding piece in the Six Weeks' Tour, the imprint of the volume comes here it is as follows::

Reynell, Printer, 45, Broad-street,

Golden-square.

LAON AND CYTHNA;

OR,

THE REVOLUTION OF THE GOLDEN CITY.

(Usually known as The Revolt of Islam).