Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni

The everlasting universe of thingsFlows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,Now dark--now glittering--now reflecting gloom--Now lending splendour, where from secret springsThe source of human thought its tribute bringsOf waters,--with a sound but half its own,Such as a feeble brook will oft assumeIn the wild woods, among the mountains lone,Where waterfalls around it leap for ever,Where woods and winds contend, and a vast riverOver 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 sailFast cloud-shadows and sunbeams: awful scene,Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes downFrom the ice-gulfs that gird his secret throne,Bursting through these dark mountains like the flameOf lightning through the tempest;--thou dost lie,Thy giant brood of pines around thee clinging,Children of elder time, in whose devotionThe chainless winds still come and ever cameTo drink their odours, and their mighty swingingTo hear--an old and solemn harmony;Thine earthly rainbows stretched across the sweepOf the ethereal waterfall, whose veilRobes some unsculptured image; the strange sleepWhich when the voices of the desert failWraps 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 theeI seem as in a trance sublime and strangeTo muse on my own separate fantasy,My own, my human mind, which passivelyNow renders and receives fast influencings,Holding an unremitting interchangeWith the clear universe of things around;One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wingsNow float above thy darkness, and now restWhere that or thou art no unbidden guest,In the still cave of the witch Poesy,Seeking among the shadows that pass byGhosts of all things that are, some shade of thee,Some phantom, some faint image; till the breastFrom which they fled recalls them, thou art there!

Some say that gleams of a remoter worldVisit the soul in sleep,--that death is slumber,And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumberOf those who wake and live.--I look on high;Has some unknown omnipotence unfurledThe veil of life and death? or do I lieIn dream, and does the mightier world of sleepSpread far around and inaccessiblyIts circles? For the very spirit fails,Driven like a homeless cloud from steep to steepThat vanishes among the viewless gales!Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky,Mont Blanc appears,--still, snowy, and serene--Its subject mountains their unearthly formsPile around it, ice and rock; broad vales betweenOf frozen floods, unfathomable deeps,Blue as the overhanging heaven, that spreadAnd wind among the accumulated steeps;A desert peopled by the storms alone,Save when the eagle brings some hunter's bone,And the wolf tracts her there--how hideouslyIts shapes are heaped around! rude, bare, and high,Ghastly, and scarred, and riven.--Is this the sceneWhere the old Earthquake-daemon taught her youngRuin? Were these their toys? or did a seaOf fire envelope once this silent snow?None can reply--all seems eternal now.The wilderness has a mysterious tongueWhich 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 repealLarge codes of fraud and woe; not understoodBy all, but which the wise, and great, and goodInterpret, or make felt, or deeply feel.

The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams,Ocean, and all the living things that dwellWithin the daedal earth; lightning, and rain,Earthquake, and fiery flood, and hurricane,The torpor of the year when feeble dreamsVisit the hidden buds, or dreamless sleepHolds every future leaf and flower;--the boundWith 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 soundAre 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 primaeval mountainsTeach the adverting mind. The glaciers creepLike snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains,Slow rolling on; there, many a precipice,Frost and the Sun in scorn of mortal powerHave piled: dome, pyramid, and pinnacle,A city of death, distinct with many a towerAnd wall impregnable of beaming ice.Yet not a city, but a flood of ruinIs there, that from the boundaries of the skyRolls its perpetual stream; vast pines are strewingIts destined path, or in the mangled soilBranchless and shattered stand; the rocks, drawn downFrom yon remotest waste, have overthrownThe limits of the dead and living world,Never to be reclaimed. The dwelling-placeOf insects, beasts, and birds, becomes its spoil;Their food and their retreat for ever gone,So much of life and joy is lost. The raceOf man flies far in dread; his work and dwellingVanish, like smoke before the tempest's stream,And their place is not known. Below, vast cavesShine in the rushing torrents' restless gleam,Which from those secret chasms in tumult wellingMeet in the vale, and one majestic River,The breath and blood of distant lands, for everRolls its loud 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 descendUpon that Mountain; none beholds them there,Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun,Or the star-beams dart through them:--Winds contendSilently there, and heap the snow with breathRapid and strong, but silently! Its homeThe voiceless lightning in these solitudesKeeps innocently, and like vapour broodsOver the snow. The secret strength of thingsWhich governs thought, and to the infinite domeOf heaven is as a law, inhabits thee!And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,If to the human mind's imaginingsSilence and solitude were vacancy?