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 1 
 
 
 
THE 
 
 sEPIC ® 
 OF AN ALP 
 
 
 Starr H.Nichols 
 
Monte 
 Rosa 
 
 Nichols 
 
MONTE ROSA 
 
 THE EPIC OF AN ALP 
 
 BY 
 
 STARR H^NICHOLS 
 
 jj^S^X^ 
 
 DuC 1882 ^ 
 
 BOSTON ^ashi^ 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 New York : 11 East Seventeenth Street 
 
 (Cfce ftfoer#&e #re£& Camfcri&ge 
 
 1883 
 
 *L\ 
 
.lit Mt 
 
 Copyright, 1882, 
 By STARR H. NICHOLS. 
 
 The Riverside Press, Cambridge: 
 Printed by II. 0. Houghton & Company. 
 
To 
 MY BELOVED WIFE, 
 
 FOR WHOSE PLEASURE THIS PUBLICATION WAS BEGUN- 
 FINISHED, ALAS! TOO LATE. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 ♦ 
 
 BOOK FIRST. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Zermatt 1 
 
 II. The Mountain 19 
 
 III. The Glacier 34 
 
 IV. St. Theodule 48 
 
 V. Milan 53 
 
 BOOK SECOND. 
 
 I. The Ascent . . 59 
 
 II. The Summit . . 88 
 
 III. With Nature 98 
 
 IV. The Descent 121 
 
 V. Pulvis et Umbra . . . . . . . 145 
 
MONTE ROSA. 
 
 ZERMATT. 
 
 By the long ranges of Valaisian Alps 
 That crowd the narrowed skies with majesty, 
 Where hoarsely cries the new-born river Wisp 
 Within its valley-cradle, old Zermatt, 
 Low-lying in a streamy gorge, receives 
 The guest of Nature to her fastnesses. 
 To its seclusion, deep as if wide seas 
 Spread silver silence round its solitude, 
 Devoutly gather, as to holy shrines, 
 Far-traveled pilgrims leaning on their staves, 
 
 And gladdened with the grandeurs of the way. 
 l 
 
2 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 Like statues of pale marble, Titan-tall, 
 
 And calm in Titan strength, the snowy peaks 
 
 O'ergaze the lowlier vales. Their lifted brows 
 
 Confront the arch of heaven on equal terms ; 
 
 Their grisly flanks record the flight of years 
 
 Whose score is hid in dim eternities ; 
 
 Their hoary heads, wrapped in white silence, 
 
 seem 
 As lost in deep and sombre reverie 
 Upon the painful changes whose rude hands 
 Have checked their fiery and unf earing youth, 
 And trimmed them to this bleared antiquity. 
 Old gray-beards ! Do they still recall, per- 
 chance, 
 The revelries of earlier days of yore, 
 When the tough-layered planet rent its folds, 
 And burnt its rocky bands like tow in twain, 
 Rocked all its coasts with earthquake, roared 
 
 with storm, 
 And with volcanic torches ringed its skies, 
 
ZERMATT. 3 
 
 While all the elements joined gleeful war, 
 Their moods being wilder and their forces 
 
 young ? 
 Time-born, time-worn, and yet outwearing time, 
 Are these dumb heralds in their age content 
 To stand mere vouchers of those stirring times ? 
 And help the younger thoughts of men to glance 
 Through chemic mysteries of cosmic change, 
 Through strange repulsions and attractions 
 
 strange 
 At play within the bubble of the globe, 
 Till riotous earth, distrained of youthful heats, 
 Convulsively drew close her shivering frame, 
 And shriveled like a beldame cowered about 
 The waning heap of unreplenished fires ? 
 What lines of wretchedness then scarred her face ! 
 What furrows drew the ever-cruel hours ! 
 How wrinkled like an ocean, high and wide, 
 Rose the rough ridges of deforming rock 
 In measureless confusion sprawled abroad ! 
 
4 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 \ 
 And still the unrelenting years ran on, 
 
 True wandering Jews, whose restless journeying 
 
 Left fossil footprints on each splintered ridge, 
 
 And softly hewed the cliffs, till here were cloven 
 
 The sundered peaks, divided widely separate 
 
 By yawning gorges, whence the sculptured 
 
 crests 
 Stood glorious o'er their valleys like young gods 
 Fresh-fallen from high Olympus ; such great 
 
 Jove 
 Might set to sentinel his chosen land. 
 
 But who the sculptors whose all-potent hands 
 Had chiseled out this giant statuary ? 
 What Titan, demon, demigod in rage, 
 Brawny artificer, loosed his huge strength 
 Upon these ridges, and for wrath drove through 
 The iron barriers of these rended crags ? 
 How shattered he the rock, and with what 
 shards 
 
ZERMATT. 5 
 
 Laid on such crashing blows, and clove the 
 
 stone 
 To such immensity, and left it torn 
 In such a crazy chaos, world gone mad, 
 The harsh memorial of his tempest wrath ? 
 And then what artist, crammed with lawless 
 
 thoughts, 
 Came in to carve the shapely peaks supreme, 
 And fashion out their graceful savagery ? 
 
 Who? Who indeed? Nor Titan, demon, god, 
 Wrought here ; no angry Vulcan from his forge, 
 No hundred-armed Briareus wroth with Jove, 
 No sullen dwarf from fire-fed Jotunheim, 
 No thought-distilling brain, nor maddened will, 
 Unleashed their forces on these shattered cliffs. 
 No ! nor no tempered steel rang on their sides, 
 No enginery thrust home a rattling tool, 
 Nor hand or hammer split their welded sands, 
 Nor artist chiseled out the towering crests. 
 
6 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 But architect and craftsman both was he 
 That all things terrene rules, the immortal sun 
 That like high God toils ever weariless, 
 Not taking Sabbath, not desiring rest, 
 Nor sparing time, but squandering like a prince 
 The golden minutes of his myriad years. 
 He having moulded earth a little star 
 From fiery mist and immemorial time, 
 And bent her planetary circle true, 
 Called out his servants to complete her orb. 
 The cloud he beckoned forth from hollow sea 
 And charged with shower ; the winds so lordly 
 
 free 
 He bid to ride as lackeys at his wheel ; 
 The ice was his forbearance, and hale heats 
 His unreined strength ; while frenzied light- 
 nings struck 
 With borrowed hammer of his radiance forged ; 
 For Lord of lords is he, and his the elements 
 To fetch and carry as his utter slaves. 
 
ZERMATT. 7 
 
 So here he put these untaught serfs to task 
 Like strolling journeyman chance - found and 
 
 hired, 
 Or clumsy laborers working by the day ; 
 A paltry mob of idlers, vagabonds, 
 Rash and uncouth mechanics, frivolous, 
 Guiltless of plan, whose sloven art made light 
 Of line and square and compass' puny rule, 
 Who laughed at pains and scorned the score 
 
 of hours. 
 The fickle shower flew headlong at the ridge, 
 Pelting all ways ; the plumy snow-flakes brushed 
 Their innocent weakness on its stony face ; 
 Weak streamlets wandered feebly down the 
 
 rock 
 In baby furrows, careless of their way ; 
 And aimlessly the strong winds whirled about ; 
 The crafty frost drove his thin wedges home 
 In scar and seam ; the lightning's random sledge 
 Smote blows of Thor on every eminence ; 
 
8 
 
 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 The ponderous glaciers pushed their awkward 
 
 planes 
 Wherever plane would run ; and daily fell 
 The dash — the soft, innumerable dash — 
 Of the sun-waves' foamless surf, in which the 
 
 stone 
 As gently broke as break the close- sealed buds 
 Of dauntless violets, when young March 
 Hunts pallid winter from the greening fields. 
 These vagrant workmen, with light touch and 
 
 strong. 
 Drove at the fire-tried rock as if for sport, 
 Nor cared a whit when grandeurs unforeseen 
 Began to grow beneath their frolic hands ; 
 But wantonly they dashed about the crests, 
 Flew down each gorge, swept every ledge, and 
 
 plaj^ed 
 Along the dreadful precipice familiarly, — 
 Children of cloud and air that took no 
 
 thought, 
 
ZERMATT. 9 
 
 Yet in good time fulfilled their due, and set 
 Their antique nobleness upon the peaks, 
 And flung the snows about them for a robe, 
 And mailed their cones in ice impregnable, 
 And showed their whiteness 'gainst the vaulted 
 
 blue 
 For one brief hour of geologic time ; 
 Dumb witnesses to our disdainful day 
 Of what was doing on earth ere man had come 
 To see. 
 
 And that unlettered time slipped on, 
 Saw tropic climes invade the polar rings, 
 Then polar cold lay waste the tropic marge ; 
 Saw monster beasts emerge in ooze and air, 
 And run their race and stow their bones in clay ; 
 Saw the bright gold bedew the elder rocks, 
 And all the gems grow crystal in their caves ; 
 Saw plant wax quick, and stir to moving worm, 
 And worm move upward reaching towards the 
 
 brute ; 
 
10 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 Saw brute by habit fit himself with brain 
 And startle earth with wondrous progeny ; 
 Saw all of these and still saw no true man. 
 For man was not, or still so rawly was, 
 That as a little child his thoughts were weak, 
 Weak and forgetful and of nothing worth, 
 And Nature stormed along her changeful ways 
 Unheeded, undescribed, the while man slept 
 Infolded in his germ, or with fierce brutes, 
 Himself but brutal, waged a pigmy war, 
 Unclad as they, and with them housed in caves, 
 Nor knew that sea retired or mountain rose. 
 
 So later men but found the peaks in place, 
 Nor dreamed of their strange making, how it 
 
 fared, 
 But saw two ranges ranked in parallel, 
 Two rival chains unearthly high, between 
 Whose white battalions wound the gorge, 
 The streamy, deep-drawn gorge where river 
 
 Wisp 
 
ZERMATT. 11 
 
 Blows his complaining trumpet loud and shrill. 
 There delves a scanty tribe of pious Swiss, 
 A care-bewildered folk in petty fields, 
 And oft think ill of hills their frequent bane. 
 These peaks men found, and lent them freak- 
 ish names, 
 Names since become thrice dear to mountain- 
 eers, 
 Who, having challenged death on their cold 
 
 flanks, 
 And given him odds for love of the blind play, 
 Came back in triumph as from battles won. 
 Each name a cloudy giant christens, one 
 Whose Atlantean port in other land 
 Would gather legend and sweet praise of song ; 
 Names thick with consonants uncouth of sound, 
 That make scant music in the beat of verse; 
 Stockhorn, Broad Rympfishhorn, and Strahlhorn 
 
 tall, 
 And Allah-lin yclept of Saracens 
 
12 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 In their brave days when great through Allah's 
 
 name 
 They harried beaten Christians o'er these 
 
 heights ; 
 Succeeds the bucklered crown of Alphubel, 
 Held sternly 'gainst unweariable storms ; 
 Then four slant towers of shaggy Mischabel, 
 Highest mid high ; with many lesser spires ; 
 Like Nubian slaves in burnous glistening white, 
 Their cliffs rise blackly, folded oft in snows 
 To shine untrammeled in the upper light, 
 Each free and proud as were all heaven his own ; 
 Like Nubian slaves their feet below are fast 
 Chained to those mighty buttresses of crag, 
 That with obtruding bareness crowd the leas. 
 
 Confronting these across that rock-bound gorge 
 Cut by the mad- waved Wisp long ages through, 
 The rival range exalts superior peaks ; 
 For on a rugged shoulder of old rock, 
 
ZERMATT. 13 
 
 Whose unhealed scars betray time's awful strife, 
 Vast Weisshorn's slaty pyramid — so yast 
 That were all Egypt's build from its large flank 
 Out-quarried, 't would no diminution show — 
 In stony strength uprears its triple walls 
 Above all rivals, and with gleaming load 
 Of pendant glaciers decks the front of heaven. 
 How long all isolate, mocking each approach, 
 It held bleak spaces of thin air alone ! 
 Till restless Tyndall of its grandeurs fain 
 Challenged its cloudy terrors, boldly braved 
 The rain of stones that rattle down its cliffs, 
 The demon winds that wrestle o'er its wedge, 
 The treacherous cornices of snow, storm-curled 
 O'er gulfs abysmal that befringe its crags, — 
 Braved all, and all out-braving all o'ercame ; 
 Then light of foot deflowered the virgin snow, 
 That slenderly leaps into kindred cloud 
 From the slim tip, its last of mortal earth. 
 Next this, the Rothhorn lifts his beamy spear 
 
14 MONTE ROSA. ' 
 
 As burnished steel upon the vassal clouds ; 
 And, smooth as ivory with cool sunshine swept, 
 Dent Blanche's radiant cone, a trophy-tusk 
 Of some huge saurian, out-torn one day 
 By some primeval Anak rude in play ; 
 Then Schallhorn's slighter grace, with Gabelhorn, 
 And Dent d'Herens, beset with shrouded spurs 
 'Neath ever-melting, never-melted snows. 
 
 Then swimming on the vision, bold and large 
 The monolith of hermit Matterhorn, 
 Lean anchorite of mountains, nakedly 
 Exposed to all the spite of wrathful heavens, 
 A gaunt Stylites on his pillar gray, 
 That in scarped precipices rises sheer 
 Midst wide unfriendly glaciers desolate; 
 An obelisk rough-hewn, grave Nature's sport, 
 Such as some wrathful genius of the Gnomes, 
 Some swift impatient Angelo of Elves, 
 Plying his furious hammer on the stone, 
 
ZERMATT. 15 
 
 Might thus have battered lamely out, and left 
 Like Medieean tombs, half-finished, twice sub- 
 lime. 
 How glooms the austere bareness of its pile ! 
 How darkly palled in tragic memories ! 
 Since Whymper with glad comrades clambering 
 
 down 
 That baffling steep, so long the frank despair 
 Of Alpine cragsmen, high with triumph flushed 
 At his new victory o'er the desperate crag, 
 Speechless with horror saw his laughing friends 
 (Rope-bound as one for happier destiny) 
 Slip backward in their tracks, and in a flash 
 Shoot wildly down the headlong-bending cliff 
 Like boulders crashing towards the Schwarze 
 
 sea ; 
 Wide spread their fluttering hands across the 
 
 ledge 
 In frantic clutches vainly wandering, 
 Till o'er the neighboring and deathful brink 
 
16 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 Of utter precipice they drop like lead 
 A thousand quivering fathoms down, the while 
 The hoarse air murmurs in their dying ears, 
 And so make end, — a grievous end untimely. 
 Young, bold, and strong, but in their strength 
 
 surprised, 
 They knew no more of youth or pleasing time. 
 
 Yet blame no blame for daring rash to death ! 
 -For while brave men have sons will deeds be 
 
 done 
 That show the perilous mettle of bold sires ; 
 And still the fearless is the nobler race, 
 Apter for life, and fitter for rude truth, 
 Prolific of such men as seek the pole, 
 Or brave the savage in hot Afric's glades, 
 Give law at home, or colonize new lands, 
 And carry Europe to the farthest Isles. 
 Of such a blood the youth will pluck the beard 
 Of wolfish death within his dabbled lair, 
 
ZERMATT. 17 
 
 To get their way, laughing his threats to scorn ; 
 And some he quickly slays, who else had died 
 Obscure in later painful beds at home ; 
 But men are born enough to spare a waste 
 In heroes, whose far-shining names undimmed 
 Bound on the withering forehead of the time 
 Shall give it lustre to the latest age. 
 
 But last we hail the central Alpine group 
 That stands far-gazing on the battlements 
 Of that portentous wall, that, like a bruised 
 And wounded serpent, trails its tortuous length 
 From sovran Blanc to sombre Engadine, — 
 There stands and claims an old preeminence. 
 Its peerless giants towering o'er the clouds 
 Like armored soldiery in glittering rank, 
 Circle the Wispach valley round, and close 
 Its bastioned gorge with lines impregnable ; 
 Then, throwing out a friendly hand snow-gloved, 
 To either side bind fast the double chain 
 
18 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 Fore-named, in one colossal horseshoe curve 
 Bent round through miles of melancholy crag. 
 
 Here mass their force the Alpine monarchs, 
 Kingly all, and like great kings companionless. 
 Breithorn the first, his bold, unshrinking brow 
 Thatched thick with snows that whitely over- 
 hang 
 The swarthy face of his scarred precipices ; 
 Castor and Pollux next, twin births of Time, 
 Old ere their Grecian counterparts were young, 
 Pure as the chosen Knights of Holy Grail, 
 In harness of the diamond-studded sleet ; 
 Then mightier Lyskamm, Coryphaeus huge, 
 Whose elephantine shoulders lightly bear 
 The cloud-gleaned harvest of a century's snows ; 
 And last the Monte Rosa, whose tall spires 
 The sun first gilds when golden morning dawns, 
 And far Orion, through slow-rolling nights, 
 Descries as nearest to his seven-fold stars. 
 
II. 
 
 THE MOUNTAIN. 
 
 Monte ROSA, queen of that large court of 
 
 kings, — 
 Reigning but ruling not, since each is sole, — 
 In all-surpassing splendor keeps high state 
 Unceasingly ; about her pillared throat 
 She twines a mantle of caressing snow, 
 Wind-blown to ripples, like a shallow brook 
 That fleets along the pebbles, dimpling on, — 
 A cloth-of-silver robe that spotlessly 
 Along her ample shoulders drifts, and falls 
 In mazy folds and furrows infinite ; 
 Now clinging close and showing vaguely clear 
 The massive undulations of her form, 
 As 'neath its marble dress a statue's limbs ; 
 Now wandering freely off in careless wreaths, 
 
20 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 Like those that round the wintry fences curl 
 In lines of shelter from the driving winds ; 
 Then drifting on, her snows become a flood 
 Of draperies voluminous, a whirl 
 Of banks and hollows, copes of ruffled sleet 
 In unrestrained disorder trailing down, 
 And tossed in sparkling sheets of frozen foam 
 Tempestuously about her feet ; so drape 
 Her mountain ruggedness, and kindly veil 
 The ravages of nothing-sparing time 
 Beneath a starry sheen of woven dews. 
 
 From Switzerland the mount escapes the vale 
 In gentle slopes, no rare height promising, — 
 Like rustic lad that setting out from home 
 His coming exaltation not forecasts, — 
 But soon puts on a more aspiring strain, 
 And swells in swift-succeeding waves its sharp 
 
 ascent 
 Of stony ridges ; like a tumbling surge 
 
THE MOUNTAIN. 21 
 
 When freshening breezes heap it wave on wave, 
 Arch springs from arch in boldly growing curve ; 
 But presently subdues its hurried rise 
 As breathless with the pace, and stays awhile 
 Where streams of confluent glacier ease the 
 
 grade ; 
 But next, abruptly from the glacial plain, 
 Like some Cologne cathedral's cliff of gray 
 O'er the mean huts of petty villagers, 
 Upsprings its central mass, in wrinkled walls 
 Of many-weathered crag, oft broken through 
 And parted into various precipices 
 By the long glaciers grinding hardly down ; 
 Here tower the cliffs in Gothic savagery 
 To heights announcing all their boundless pride 
 And scornful purpose, bearing in strong arms 
 A large plateau, where trackless snow-fields wide 
 Lie tranquilly outspread, and bright with sun, 
 Peaceful as meads Elysian seen in sleep ; 
 And long, deep-drifted swales whose restless 
 
 curves 
 
22 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 Capricious bend in tempest-moulded lines; 
 And treeless glens, smooth-floored with sifted 
 
 snows, 
 Couched tenderly beneath the shaggy brows 
 Of darkling crags, dells for trim fairies' meet, 
 When 'neath pleased moons Titania calls the 
 
 rout, 
 Sure no intrusive foot will mar the tryst ; 
 Succeed new cliffs again, whose rigid lines, 
 As sternly tense as fierce Ambition's face 
 Set to harsh ends, break grimly through the 
 
 crust, 
 And like tall pines that to the sun stretch up 
 Their arid tops from dank sun-starved ravines, 
 Strain on, as if the pitch already gained, 
 The giddy elevation, still were naught, 
 And still to rise were easy, since no thought 
 Of halt, no weary need of stay intrudes, 
 And even gravitation, long out-breath'd 
 Seems left for dead below; all sublimed 
 
 
THE MOUNTAIN. 23 
 
 In one vast lift, and mighty bulk, and heap 
 Of rock and earth snow-vested all its change- 
 less year. 
 Then finally two slender tapering spires 
 In dainty grace salute the sky, and crave 
 His company. 
 
 So gradually gains 
 The aspiring mount its vantage o'er the Swiss ; 
 But bluffs the swart Italians roughly off 
 With an abrupt, stupendous precipice, 
 As if some planet-carving demiurge, 
 With one strong sweep of his resistless sword, 
 Had shorn the rock-ribbed framework of the 
 
 globe 
 Clean through to centre, that the half-world fell 
 To lowest abyss ; the other raised its front 
 A massive bastion, rampart measureless, 
 A tyrant and colossal barrier, 
 Fit parting of dissevered hemispheres. 
 Harshly it breaks across the gracious vales, 
 
24 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 And prisons them darkly in, checks man and 
 
 beast, 
 And halts the light- winged birds in vagrant 
 
 sight, 
 
 Save the rare eagle on his level vans ; 
 A wall so sheer no snow doth cleave to it, 
 No cleft-sown cedar mask its nakedness, 
 No hardy birch get root-hold in its seams; 
 Barely the many-fingered mosses cling, 
 Brown lichens curl, and fearless saxifrage 
 Shakes out its milky bells against the crag, 
 Where dainty-footed chamois lightly flash, 
 A living lightning, 'cross its unmoved face ; 
 So deep its plunge, that half a measured league 
 Of reeling air not brushes to its base, 
 Where spire-tall pines as grasses seem to wave ; 
 And from its dizzy brink, the traveler, 
 Swooning with fear, plucks back his hasty foot, 
 As if a mottled snake had stung it suddenly, 
 Or skulking death, in ambush 'neath the brim, 
 
THE MOUNTAIN. 25 
 
 Caught at him sharply, calling loud his name. 
 In savage grandeur breaks the huge rock down 
 Abrupt, unbuttressed, undivided, black, 
 From the cold snow-line to warm haunts of 
 
 men, 
 Then folds its feet about with velvet meads, 
 Where thick grass springs, and vineyards yield 
 
 their grapes, 
 Brown hamlets nestle, tinkling goat-bells ring, 
 And soft-aired, verdurous valleys bend away 
 Toward orange groves, and where gray olives bud. 
 
 But far aloft the silent silvery peaks, 
 Swept round by tangled. glaciers as an ocean isle 
 By swirling currents, o'er-survey the world 
 'Mid lifeless solitudes ; nor know life's stir, 
 Save the lost chamois whistling for his herd, 
 Or when the starling in his noisy hosts 
 Makes migratory turmoil o'er the snow, 
 Or clanging storks from Scandinavian homes, 
 
26 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 In flight for lands of mosque and groves of palm, 
 Rustle the silence with their rapid wings. 
 All else repeats the lonelier age, ere life 
 Was born; the thoughtless wind makes harp 
 
 jEolian 
 Of the serrate crag, the avalanche falls, 
 The rock decays, and tumbles roaring down ; 
 But voiceless are the wastes, where no man 
 
 dwells, 
 Where bat nor bittern haunts, nor lone wild 
 
 beast, 
 Whose dells are vacant of the cricket's song, 
 The cry of owl, or plaintive whippoorwill, 
 The sea-susurrus of the soughing pines, 
 And everywhere is deadness undisturbed. 
 
 For ages thus, dim with aerial mists, 
 Untouched of any soil of common earth, 
 Her radiant highness on a rock-hewn chair 
 Sits throned in guise imperial : her seat 
 
THE MOUNTAIN. 27 
 
 Of no wrought porphyry's empurpled pride, 
 Nor polished marble rough with artist's thoughts. 
 But crumpled schists of gneiss, and protogine, 
 With mica's shining weakness flaked and seamed ; 
 Nature's most coarse originals, untouched 
 Of nice refinements, ragged, rent, and stained, 
 And scribbled thickly o'er with mystic runes 
 That tell how from red fire they came, and how 
 Transformed afresh from sea, and how were 
 
 raised, 
 Upon the swelling back of vapors strong, 
 How fixed in place, and shaped ; legend most 
 
 strange ! 
 Which they who ran have read, scrawled large 
 In that barbaric tongue, wherewith — his 
 
 mark — 
 The sloven time signs all his manual works. 
 
 Beneath, the ponderous mountain-pillar sinks 
 Its shaft, and adamantine strength far down 
 
28 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 From glimpses of the ever-prying sun, 
 Night-piercing moon, or eye of watchful star, 
 Beyond discovered reaches of the mine, 
 Beyond the lowest gorge of ocean's floor, 
 To Pluto's murky realm and cave unvisited, 
 Where prisoned earthquakes shake their hid- 
 eous bars, 
 And young volcanoes bubble gruesomely ; 
 There rests the mount, its vast foundations 
 
 braced 
 On that colossal arch whose sweeping span 
 O'ervaults the muttering lakes of central fire, 
 The flux and fume of windless inner se&s 
 And molten bays still vexed incessantly. 
 
 Italian skies of deep untroubled blue 
 Thrice-dyed bind close their sapphire coronet 
 To Monte Rosa's alabaster brow. 
 The climates, all astray from guardian months, 
 Race up and down her sides capriciously, 
 
TEE MOUNTAIN. 29 
 
 Like truant children whiling out the time. 
 The gypsy clouds a-loitering mid the hills, 
 Strolling adventurers from the teeming sea, 
 Rehearse their shows before her, and discourse 
 Their evanescent pomp to her eternity ; 
 Now pitch their roving tents on her large slopes, 
 Now trail their arrowy streamers from her tip, — 
 Pennons of coasting tempests still mast-down 
 The low horizon ; now furl gray storm-caps 
 Round her pallid brow ; or lifting, climb the cope 
 Of careless heaven to mock her envious heights 
 With higher cliffs of fog ; then drooping low 
 In long pavilions stretch their lazy folds, 
 Soft canopies, above her lily head, 
 'Neath which she seems to lie reclined at ease, 
 Some stately daughter to a sceptred king, 
 Head leaned on hand in summer indolence, 
 And large fair limbs outstretched at length, 
 
 half -draped 
 And half-displayed, while lights and shadows 
 
 changefully, 
 
30 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 Like furtive smiles from sleepy eyelids shed, 
 Play o'er her fields of snow ; and reveries faint 
 Steal through her thoughtful heart in silentness ; 
 Heedless as love of time, and what time brings, 
 And pure as Dian walking heaven alone. 
 
 Thicken the clouds, she hails the gathering fray, 
 And yields her queenliness. to hordes of storm ; 
 With sweet, cool breath conjures the vaporous 
 
 throng, 
 Like wily Circe in her subtlety, 
 And of their pilfered spoil from every sea 
 She robs them cunningly, while they beguiled 
 Lie softly on her bosom ; nor resents 
 Rude rain, nor hail, nor blasts of bullying winds, 
 That howl their bluster in her ice-hung caves, 
 Nor blow from lightning's arm, whose brand of 
 
 flame 
 Smites on her streaming forehead brutally, 
 Cleaving her well-forged crags as woodman 
 
 cleaves 
 
THE MOUNTAIN. 31 
 
 A log with his keen axe ; throws trembling back 
 The bellowing thunder's harmless noise renewed 
 In deep reverberations from her walls ; 
 Lets slip the flying avalanche from its high- 
 perch 
 Upon the rocks to stoop a feathery cloud 
 Of white-winged mischief on the smothered 
 
 meads ; 
 Or flings the fragments of her rended cliffs 
 With booming uproars to the lowest dell. 
 Herself as wild as any tempest born 
 Of the conceiving heaven's immingled airs, 
 Joins in the loud illimitable tumult 
 As one with elemental nature's self, 
 Not unscathed, but of the scath unreckful ; 
 And while the scowling rabble of low cloud 
 Spits out its snow-flakes to confederate winds, 
 Plucks in the fleecy waste to every cleft, 
 And craftily with shuttles of the blast 
 Weaves a new surface to her seamless robe, 
 
32 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 Wherein, the storm withdrawn, she meets the 
 
 day, 
 Serene as Juno on Olympus throned, 
 And sparkling more than night's unnumbered 
 
 stars. 
 
 So Monte Rosa stands in empery, 
 And so has stood more slowly-pacing years 
 Than there are needles on the branching pine, 
 Holding a winter in perpetual fee ; 
 With naught of change save waste, and weather- 
 ing ; 
 Cloud, calm, and sun her sole vicissitudes. 
 Nor ever could the tardy spring here find 
 A fruit-tree grown to hang her blossoms on, 
 Nor summer leaves to shade her burning eyes, 
 Nor could boy autumn shake a browning nut 
 From any copse within her terraces. 
 Sparse arctic plants, children of ancient cold, 
 About her glaciers' lip hang small and weak, 
 
THE MOUNTAIN. 33 
 
 Left orphans here, belated in the flight 
 Their comrades made, upon the ragged skirts 
 Of the decaying ice-cape once thick-wrapt 
 About the shivering shoulders of the North, 
 But on her bossy uplands plays no child, 
 Nor human generations dare advance 
 Their monuments amid her dateless pinnacles. 
 Coldly she keeps her virgin court, nor heeds 
 Of all revolving earth's far-ranging course, 
 And punctual circuit through sun-governed skies, 
 
III. 
 
 THE GLACIER. 
 
 The miser Winter banks unbounded hoards 
 Of silvery snows locked fast in wards of frost 
 On Monte Rosa's stronghold ; there, with clutch 
 Of unrelaxing fingers stiff for cold, 
 Holds them well-guarded lest the spendthrift 
 
 hours 
 Of lavish Summer filch the treasured store. 
 Deeply he dreads the prowling fohn-wind's 
 
 breath, 
 Deeply, the sun's sly ray unscrupulous, 
 And stealthy depredations of gray rains. 
 But misers' hoards oft fall to gentle heirs, 
 And flow to human uses ; so these snows, 
 So keenly guarded, o'er-amassed in time 
 
 
THE GLACIER. 35 
 
 By often robberies of the traveler-clouds, 
 And heaped to surfeit crowd their rocky bounds, 
 Then squeezing through the niggard's full- 
 crammed fist, 
 Steal off unhindered down a choked ravine 
 Dug through the mountain's midmost scaurs, 
 
 wherein 
 To crystal ice transformed by magic wand 
 Of laughing fairies in the sunbeams hid, 
 They join the laggard glacier's secular march, 
 Which, like calm planets, knows nor haste nor 
 rest. 
 
 This glacier stream, compact of welded snows, 
 
 A flowing solid of translucent ice, 
 
 Brims to its verge a flinty gorge ; there lies 
 
 In silence sunning its unwieldy bulk, 
 
 A strange frost-dragon in steel-gleaming scales 
 
 Coiled close the crags between in many a fold, 
 
 And sinuous curve, and glancing, fretful ring, 
 
36 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 Like Norseman's Fafnir, serpent shrewd and 
 
 foul 
 That gloats above the Niblung's ruddy gold. 
 A monster vast and vague, whose horrent spines, 
 The nodding seracs on his bended neck, 
 Tall-bristling as a feudal city's towers, 
 Give show of kindling anger ; whose blue 
 
 mouths, 
 A thousand grim crevasses, spread their jaws 
 Like ghastly graves in wait for living men. 
 In his rock-riven lair he lies supine, 
 Groaning by turns, as gorged with heavy food ; 
 And seeming motionless secretes his dull intent, 
 But inches on unnoticed, vale-ward bound, 
 Tricked thither falsely by the sun's bright lure. 
 
 A Protean changeling, much he masquerades, 
 Eluding quest along his devious way: 
 First spreads abroad a thresher's level floor, 
 Then in long rigid swells gray ocean mocks, 
 
 
THE GLACIER. 37 
 
 And further winds his train in strenuous curves, 
 A winter highway deeply groined by wheels, 
 About some cape of crag, or headland bold 
 Thrust sharply on its path; then staggering 
 
 down 
 A short declivity, one ruffled coil 
 Disparts its glittering scales, that flinging back 
 The sun betrays the reptile on his way ; 
 But next he crushes through a steep defile, 
 Where with convulsive struggles cleaves his 
 
 back 
 In gulfy chasms, abysses bottomless, 
 Ragged and tossed, as had an earthquake turned 
 In restless sleep beneath his brittleness : 
 Here, toppling icebergs lift their glassy cliffs; 
 There, well-squared blocks huge as the slave-cut 
 
 stones 
 Of building Pharaohs, or tumbled wreck 
 Of walls Cyclopean, old Mycenae's pride ; 
 One bright confusion, turgid anarchy ; 
 
38 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 While still as sleeping crocodile by reedy Nile, 
 That basking in the sunshine sleepeth long, 
 The sluggard keeps his journeying unbetrayed. 
 
 But reaching suddenly the frightful brink 
 Of a sheer precipice, the glacier halts 
 As stiff with horror, all its steely spines 
 Erect in regiments of glancing pikes and spears 
 And bayonets of broken soldiery, 
 Dismayed by rumors of an unseen foe, 
 And fixed in wild disorder as they stand. 
 
 But when the moonlight sheds elusive gleam 
 Upon these frigid fantasies, the wan-faced 
 
 throngs 
 Stand ghastly horrible, a maniac rout 
 Of graveyard ghosts by one mad impulse seized, 
 An eerie throng of goblins, phantoms, weirds, 
 All leaning guilty forward bent for home, 
 But caught untimely in their panic-flight 
 
THE GLACIER. 89 
 
 By toll of matin bells, and cock's shrill crow 
 In the cool break of dawn, and petrified 
 Upon their ghostly track ; silent as tombs, 
 Save when some glimmering tower, driven se- 
 cretly 
 Beyond his poise, goes crashing down the steep, 
 A world of icy ruin as it flies, 
 And clangs the plausive echoes with its din. 
 
 But still thrust on by ever-crowding snows, 
 Held in cold durance on the mountain's top, 
 The unwilling Python leaps the bitter verge, 
 And falls a weltering ruin in the abyss ; 
 There shattered into fragments trails along, 
 A cataract of riven torsos, limbs, 
 And mangled men in marble, as had here 
 Great Athens dashed her sculptured failures 
 
 down 
 From this unfaned Acropolis ; or say, 
 A lava-flow of lucent mother-o'-pearl 
 
40 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 In lava-torture writhing as it runs ; 
 A soundless cascade, death-struck Niagara, 
 Or else Niagara's rapid ere the fall* 
 Seized in grand rush of all its racing floods, 
 Its waterspouts, its flinging jets of foam, 
 Struck in mid-volley by the trancing breath 
 Of zero cold ; that fierce flow frozen, all swirls 
 Congealed, each furrowed rill, each glassy drop, 
 And every rainbow bubble caught surprised 
 At top of speed, and crystaled as it flew ; 
 While here and there a leaning Pisa-tower, 
 Mid-rapid left, stands strangely eminent 
 Amid its shattered compeers, rooted fast 
 Within its treacherous base. 
 
 Thus wounded, torn 
 At surface ; but deep down the wily worm 
 Has kept his swollen body whole and sound ; 
 All fresh and unconcerned and fearlessly 
 He holds his headstrong course to that low vale 
 For which he started half an age ago. 
 
THE GLACIER. 41 
 
 The ice-fall past, the glacier gathers in 
 His shivered members, smooths his furrowed face, 
 And spreads again in fair expanse of field, 
 A fruitless glebe no plowshare ever rends, 
 No sower sows with seed, though lying plane, 
 And well-bestead with limpid boiling springs, 
 With here and there a lakelet blue, and large 
 As a circus ring, whose depths untenanted 
 See never minnow herding in its pools, 
 Nor swift-finned pike dart on the silly dace, 
 Nor painted trout surprise the gilded fly, 
 But peacefully the prisoned waters smile 
 Within their sea-green bowls of carven ice, 
 Fit goblets for great Thor and Odin great 
 When wandering from dim Asgard in the North 
 They raised the hunt amid archaic hills ; 
 Pellucid meres, whose baby wavelets low 
 Break softly on the sharp, unpebbled marge, 
 Where greens no sedge, nor music-making rush, 
 No cress, nor water-loving flag, nor mint, 
 Nor odorous lily brave in white and gold. 
 
42 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 By night the ice-sheet lies as dead with cold, 
 But sunrise brings the pulse of life to it ; 
 For rustling through its pores like wind in corn, 
 Millions of new-born rills begin to drip 
 With myriad morning-murmur musical, 
 And stir its pulses with first throbs of life. 
 The drops to rills, the rills to rivulets fill, 
 And these to brooks, that wax to dashing 
 
 streams ; 
 The streams uniting into torrents swell, 
 That smoke along their course with rocket-speed, 
 Grooving deep sluice-ways in the dripping ice 
 Veined like an agate, and of such bright gleam 
 As shines from polished marble touched with sun 
 Upon its watery brilliance, seen thus fair 
 At new St. Paul's outside the Roman walla. 
 Here, coffined all alive, the bubbling floods, 
 Swifter than storm-blown birds that fleetly skim 
 To leeward down a gale, slip down their runs, 
 Clashing their cymbals in melodious haste, 
 
THE GLACIER. 43 
 
 And pause no instant in the breathless course, 
 Until they reach the Moulin's gloomy pit, — 
 A witch's well of blackest mystery 
 Bored through the glacier's breast to soundless 
 
 depths, 
 And weirdly hung with looped and torn ice- 
 fringe, 
 And ragged icicles about its lip ; 
 Here gleefully bounds in the ramping flood 
 'Mid shrilling echoes from the straitened walls, 
 Breathing its watery smoke to heaven, then hides 
 In hollow caves by cold enchantments bound, 
 Nor sparkles into sunshine thence for many 
 days. 
 
 Far down the gorge the glacier welters on, 
 Out-breathing death wherever points its tongue, 
 While on it grows nor tree nor smallest shrub, 
 Nor bird gives voice, nor ever any beast 
 Goes down to graze there, nor doth insect glean 
 
44 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 His morsel-meal from its dull barrenness ; 
 But in its bosom lies the chamois dead, 
 Entrapped, fond brute ! in some unblest cre- 
 vasse, 
 With travelers pale, and o'er-adventurous guides 
 Snatched from the crest of life's most happy 
 
 hour 
 To this long sleep and hated sepulchre. 
 And on its bosom tombs the errant bee, 
 And silly butterfly encrystaled there, 
 By sunshine traitored in a flowery quest, 
 Where never flower blossomed, nor shall bloom ; 
 And on its sluggish back it hales away 
 Great loads of mountain spoil in smutty lines 
 Of black moraine, the shapeless wreck and 
 
 shred 
 Of grand old crags, and beauteous peaks, whose 
 
 strength 
 It slowly ruins, — slave that slays its king. 
 A belt of Arctic cold, it crowds between 
 
THE GLACIER. 45 
 
 The fields where gracious summer glows, 
 
 Pushing its devastations to the end ; 
 
 Then, foully burrowing 'neath stone and earth, 
 
 Is slain in secret by the assassin Sun, 
 
 Whose treacherous lure hath brought it down 
 
 so low; 
 Yielding its life-blood in a moaning stream, 
 The tawny Wisp whose torrent floods make 
 
 haste 
 To drown their clamor in the leaping Rhone. 
 But, daily slain, the glacier daily fills 
 The rock-sown glen with echoing currents loud, 
 That fuller flow the more the dog-star burns, 
 Gladdening the meadows of remotest men 
 With benefactions sprung they know not whence, 
 And haply care not in their indolence. 
 So every snow-flake wrung from Winter's hand, 
 And miser-grasp, finds its old home, — the sea, 
 And frolics on the surge, whence in a cloud 
 By false Ixion, that seducer Sun, 
 'T was ravished willingly so long ago. 
 
46 
 
 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 Oh ! happy we, whose brief and page of life 
 On kindlier reaches of remembered time 
 Is written, when but degenerate broods 
 Of pristine monster-glaciers gall the hills ; 
 Nor know, as our unknown forefathers knew, 
 His deadly greatness, when one ice-sheet 
 
 wrapped 
 His vast of body round each isolate peak, 
 And trailed a mighty octopus his hundred arms 
 And loathy tentacles of horrid death 
 Across the fertile acreage, then gorged 
 The valleys with his slimy hulk, and crawled 
 Supinely o'er the hill-sides for his prey ; 
 Winning the reindeer from cold Norway down, 
 And woolly mammoth with their vanished mates, 
 That craved perpetual winter for its cold. 
 How groaned the land beneath his frigid bulk ! 
 How fled skin-clad barbarians affright ! 
 Their pastures buried, wattled huts o'erturned, 
 And hunting grounds laid waste, nor dared 
 
 return 
 
THE GLACIER. 47 
 
 For drear immeasurable millenniums, 
 Till wounded grievously the glacier lay, — 
 Fafnir by solar Siegfried deeply cloven, — 
 A dragon shriveled, spent, and shrunken back 
 To his high mountain fastnesses, half-dead, 
 Mere fossil of his prime, and mummied corse 
 Of that prodigious spoiler whose foul length 
 O'erlay this realm with universal blight, 
 And hideous leagues of body unassoiled. 
 But now in his abandoned ranges wide 
 Men plant their vines, and drink the blood of 
 
 grapes, 
 Build sunny homes, and reap their grains in 
 
 peace, 
 So long as he returns to scathe no more. 
 
IV. 
 ST. THEODULE. 
 
 Beneath dark Breithorn's beetling brow, 'twixt 
 
 that 
 And rearing Matterhorn, St. Theodule 
 Bends graciously its snow-white neck, as when 
 The laggard ox stoops low his tranquil head 
 To take the yoke ; so forms a crescent pass 
 In that forbidding wall, which otherwise 
 Imprisons Zermatt the streamy in its guard. 
 Thence on clear days, when noon pours its steep 
 
 light 
 On the white wonder of the Rosa's snows, 
 The mount displays its glories unsurpassed. 
 Set like a castle mastered of great drifts, 
 And buried half beneath them, — while its lords 
 
ST. THEODULE. 49 
 
 Are gone, and gone its ladies all, it stands 
 
 Corner to a supernal masonry, 
 
 Whose uncoursed crag within its hollow ring 
 
 Begirds the Gorner glacial circus round, 
 
 Building a matchless amphitheatre — 
 
 So large 't would dwarf Rome's Colosseum 
 
 To a f easter's bowl, — with glacier paved, 
 
 And terraced to the clouds with bank on bank 
 
 Of trailing glaciers, crystal, undefiled. 
 
 Here seems as if the word were given 
 
 To deck a fitting court for that assize 
 
 Delayed so long, when risen men should stand 
 
 In their simplicity before the throne, 
 
 The great white Throne which scarce shall shine 
 
 more bright 
 Than these broad snows beneath this midday sun. 
 
 Here Breithorn, the surpliced Twins, and Lys- 
 
 kamm 
 With Monte Rosa ranged, — unbroken choir 
 
50 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 Of voiceless singers, choral to the eye, 
 
 One giant picture form, at one glance swept 
 
 From crown to base, from base to dazzling 
 
 crown, 
 A silver splendor, seat of innocence. 
 Each dark-faced precipice, each slender spire, 
 And every craggy cape and shadowy bay, 
 Are boldly marked amid wide, crusted snows, 
 Whose lustre blinds a quadrant of the sky ; 
 Their tireless roods of heaven-encroaching line 
 Aspiring to the zenith threat the stoop, 
 And quivering curve of azure firmament, 
 That bends a lover's pace beyond their tips ; 
 Their glory, vastness, strength in deep repose, 
 Tower in such near horizon, so sublime 
 That Nature stands astonished, blinded, dazed, 
 Amid imperial glories still her own. 
 
 Here one refulgent morning, after days 
 Of storm, when hosts of thoughtless clouds had 
 flung 
 
ST. THEODULE. 51 
 
 Discarded snows on every bossy hill, 
 
 Chanced a good bishop from a western see, 
 
 A man athletic for his years and work, 
 
 Who held great Nature dear, and not too much 
 
 Accursed by her Creator's word of haste, 
 
 When Adam " took and ate." Here, toiling on 
 
 O'er the high level of St. Theodule, 
 
 Whose unvexed slope as polished ivory shone, 
 
 The dazzling spectacle immense and pure, 
 
 Its all-unrivaled, immemorial grace 
 
 Stirred his grave soul to ecstasy divine, 
 
 That so he stood quite still, and called his guides, 
 
 Those hardened veterans in such sceneries, 
 
 To check their swinging steps, and bare their 
 
 heads 
 With him in holy reverence, while each, 
 As each had learned at mother's knee, re-said 
 In his own native speech the Lord's great prayer, 
 Our Father, which in Heaven art (as chanced 
 A psalm in triple tongue), to testify 
 
52 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 Transcendent gratitude to God most high, 
 For such amazing glory at its full. 
 
 So stood he with the astounded hill-men there, 
 Like some primeval Druid in his woods, 
 Head bared, and lifted hands outspread toward 
 
 heaven, 
 His white hair floating on the idle breeze, 
 Adoring ancient Nature — goddess dear, 
 And mother of all worships 'neath the sun — 
 With deep, ancestral reverence, ere he knew 
 Her gracious cult behind its thin disguise: 
 Stirring the wintry waste with such a voice 
 Of transport as his high cathedral roof 
 Had seldom echoed from its fretted vault. 
 
MILAN. 
 
 A STRANGER once at Milan loitering 
 Throughout a leaden day, fatigued at last 
 With the rich city's treasures, — jewels, shrines, 
 Ivories, and pictures, and the Iron Crown, — 
 I turned my steps to the Duomo's fane, 
 The hour before the dimmed Apollo drove 
 His drowsy team below the western wave. 
 Thence through the incense fumes, and past the 
 
 priest 
 Droning his dolorous chant, I mounted 
 Up to the pinnacled and saint-thronged roof, 
 And saw the vesper city dim beneath, 
 And nothing more, and felt the world was small 
 
 and mean. 
 
54 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 But suddenly the clinging vapors, touched 
 By chill of gaining night, swept back their folds, 
 And opened all-glorious Nature to her depths. 
 Like all the immortal gods, the white-cliffed Alps, 
 A full Olympus of divinities, 
 Towered high in sunny grandeur on the north, 
 And Monte Rosa, like great Hera, first. 
 Upon her swart and dreadful precipices 
 A deeply-moving beauty delicately shed, 
 And in her dusky vales a tender glow 
 Of purpling atmospheres, that royally 
 Bathed crag and buttress and each shaggy spur, 
 And softened all rough outlines into grace ; 
 But on her fulgent spires such light ineffable 
 As makes men sigh to share her heavenly 
 
 heights, 
 Their fadeless pleasure, and unchanging calm. 
 A lotus land of pensive afternoons, 
 A garden of Hesperides, whose close 
 The gold-haired daughters of the kingly sun 
 
MILAN. 55 
 
 Kept carefully, where fear, nor night, nor death 
 Could come, nor winter fall for all its snows ; 
 But where the palm might lift its plumy fronds, 
 The peacock burn, the slim gazelles find rest, 
 And all rare things the gloaming hollows hold. 
 
 Then sank the sun, and saffron grew to pink 
 Upon the flushing snows, till spire and dome 
 And every silver valley filled with fire ; 
 And like a heavenly rose upon the sky 
 The well-named Rosa blossomed full and large, 
 And flung her blushes to the eastern clouds, 
 And far across gray earth, and crowned the 
 
 heavens 
 With more than many roses' loveliness. 
 
 Then gathering fire the rock itself did burn, 
 
 A flameless pillar, red Arabian gold, 
 
 Or ruddy coral from Pacific seas, 
 
 Built to a dreamer's palace looming warm 
 
56 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 In dreamer's whirl of lawless fantasy 
 
 Against the darkening twilight* such no poet 
 
 sang, 
 Or e'er shall truly sing as it deserves. 
 
 Then fading slow, as fled the truant sun, 
 
 Failed to such flowery hues, and ravishing, 
 
 As o'er shy spring's ambrosial orchards roll 
 
 In fold on fold of odorous April bloom, 
 
 Where white and pink contend for mastery, 
 
 And now the pink is all, and now the white, 
 
 But lovely, dainty, pure, and delicate 
 
 Beyond compare ; as if the dewy eve 
 
 Had touched the rude rock's flinty heart, and set 
 
 Unwonted juices leaping in its veins 
 
 And hardened pulses, till it smiled in flowers. 
 
 But paler grew against the growing dusk, 
 Till carven cloud it feigned, yet more than cloud, 
 Of subtler line than cloud could ever draw ; 
 
MILAN. 57 
 
 Rather say, a rigid wave of chiseled foam, 
 A swollen tempest-surge, with dimples dark, 
 Liquid jets, and melting bulbs translucent 
 Turned to stone, and fixed in air so loftily, 
 It seemed the roof and parting of the world. 
 With sight of its unfailing strength, men's 
 
 hearts 
 Wax strong, and in its restfulness find peace. 
 And so it stood until the jealous Sun 
 Drove off in anger, taking all his beams, 
 And left the world to darkness unrelieved. 
 
 
 But everywhere a subtle sorcery 
 
 Prevails ; the mountain charm subdues all 
 
 change 
 Of changeful nature to itself unchanged. 
 Splendor of sun, or pallor of chill moon, 
 Dawn's tranquil gold, eve's afterglow of fire, 
 Stillness like sleep, or roar of hindered storm, 
 But magnify, not mar, her majesty ; 
 
58 MONTE ROSA.' 
 
 While all the wearing years that waste the world, 
 And human hearts as well, but little win 
 From that high grace wherein it pleases God 
 To keep his mountain standing for a time. 
 
BOOK SECOND. 
 
 I. 
 
 THE ASCENT. 
 
 But not at Monte Rosa's foot appalled 
 Need men sit cowed, while envious of her heights. 
 A clever cragsman, sound of limb and bold, 
 May stoutly dare the snow, the ice, the crag, 
 And push his clamber till he stand supreme 
 On the sharp tip, a blunted needle's point, 
 And zone the world with solitary gaze. 
 
 While earth yet sleeps within that shadow cool 
 Of her own body, which men call The Night, 
 Strides forth the alert and girded mountaineer, 
 With clattering heels that worry all the house, 
 Across the friendly threshold of the auberge 
 
60 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 Crowning the Eiffel's brim high o'er Zermatt. 
 With him go brave companions and bold guides, 
 And toilsome porters carrying food and gear, 
 Stalwart, stout-hearted Swiss, of that unflinch- 
 ing race 
 So true to duty though the worst impend, 
 Who mostly die, slain by these ruffian crags, 
 Yet none the more desert them, but defy. 
 Keen Alpine axe in hand, and shoulder ringed 
 With coil of trusty rope, whereon may hang 
 All lives, ere day is done, the men fare forth 
 Across the scanty sward, whose downward stoop 
 Misgives the coming toil with short-lived ease ; 
 See the large constellations burning bright, 
 The Milky Way's high bridge and trembling 
 
 mile, 
 Between the antlered foreheads of the hills, 
 That bar the dusk horizon solemnly 
 Against the lonely magic of the night. 
 How ghostly looms the all-dispeopled world ! 
 
THE ASCENT. 61 
 
 How haunted its wide silence steeped in dark ! 
 Sombre and dull, oppressed with lingering sleep, 
 They stumble mid the pathless shingle, where 
 The glow-worm lantern throws a sickly ray 
 That darkens darkness with its wavering flame. 
 Then soon they skirt columnar Riffelhorn, 
 Whose guilty rock, like many a taller Alp, 
 Has slain its man without remorseful sign ; 
 Then leap upon the Gorner glacier's floor, 
 Whose stationed flood, a solid Amazon, 
 Lies naked to the stars in pulseless sleep, 
 And plod along in angry wonderment 
 That men should waste their drowsy, restful 
 
 morns 
 In such emprise to climb a foolish hill. 
 But ere their lagging feet have paced its breadth, 
 Behold ! the Bedouin Night strikes his brown 
 
 tent, 
 And swift of foot slinks subtly down the west 
 Before a cool, thin light, that drives its has- 
 tening wave 
 
62 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 Beneath the stars, and quells their eager eyes. 
 The sickle-moon flings forth one keener flash 
 (As Dian angered at her near eclipse), 
 Then fades to withered cloud, and less than 
 
 cloud. 
 Meanwhile the cheery Day begins to light 
 Within the smoky caves of eastern mists 
 His earlier fires ; feebly they glimmer first, 
 A low white dawn with faintest breeze astir, — 
 Then faintly reddening steal from fog to 
 
 fog 
 Uncertainly, as when betimes aroused 
 A camping hunter lights a brush-heap stored 
 In some rock-chimney, feebly curls the flame, 
 Half lost in smoke along the cold, green wood, 
 And scarce gives sign if it will win or no. 
 But striking up the hill and cope of heaven, 
 Auroral streamers dash the gauzy scud, 
 That floats so high it seems beyond the air, 
 With spray of saffron pale, that ripples wide 
 
THE ASCENT. 63 
 
 Till all the dusky east is swept with wave 
 Of daffodil transpierced with twinkling stars. 
 Then heaps exultant Morn his gaining fires, 
 And flings their glowing embers far abroad 
 Upon the folded cloud-rack palled in gloom 
 Upon the dense horizon, kindling it 
 Like summer thatch with swift access of flame, 
 And penciling its fretful caverns with hues 
 That shame the gold and scarlet-painted woods, 
 When autumn frost to , rainbow fires their 
 
 green ; 
 Then higher still piles Day his furnaces, 
 Till with fierce lustres running swift as thought 
 Through maddened crowds, he flies along the 
 
 mists, 
 And burns in tranquil conflagration pure, 
 Intense, and vaster than wide prairies show, 
 When red men light the grass ; but noise- 
 lessly, 
 As step of spring o'er beds of sweet arbutus, 
 
64 MONTR ROSA. 
 
 Flames and glows through all the curtained 
 
 vapors 
 Hung arow 'bove unresponsive snow-fields 
 Ghastly pale, till heaven is paved like gold 
 With level leagues of incandescent cloud, 
 That blazing fiercely still blaze unconsumed. 
 Then last the Orient Sun, Day's joyful lord, 
 His silver lances held on high before, 
 Extends his sceptre to the stooping hills, 
 Now bending lowly toward his changeless seat, 
 As vassal earth on fervid axis whirls ; 
 And loosing all his meteors into air, 
 Than star-showers brighter when the night is 
 
 full, 
 Than snow-flakes thicker when the squall is 
 
 fierce, 
 Fulfills the immeasurable gulfs of space 
 With glancing lights and flakes of living fire, 
 As were no end to his still wasting store, 
 And brings the dear familiar daylight back, 
 And all things dear to happy men with it. 
 
THE ASCENT. 65 
 
 Now speed the sunny meteors, flock on flock, 
 Swifter than winter-shunning birds, and fly 
 In arrowy lines to Monte Rosa's tip 
 Of flushing stone, lighting in myriads. 
 Legions more on soundless unreturning wing, 
 Bear down to the grim brotherhood of peaks 
 All sombre still with night's cold loneliness, 
 And cheer their drearihead with day's new smile. 
 Still following myriads, without a pause, 
 Drop flitting, gay invaders down each cliff, 
 Whose wrinkled eld they mask in veils of rose ; 
 Brush the wan snow plains with an alien gold; 
 Sweep quickly off the webs of silver rime, 
 By frolic night-folk spun in highland dells 
 For their light sports ; unseal frost-fettered rills, 
 And pierce the heavy eyes of herdsmen lone, 
 And maids undaunted on the upland meads, 
 Where breezy summer long they tend their kine, 
 For humble wealth, though lean return of curds ; 
 Cloud-girt as Jove on Ida, dim to men 
 5 
 
66 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 As sailors ice-embargoed near the pole, 
 
 And deaf to thund'rous tides of that great world 
 
 Ringed broadly round their feet, whose loud 
 
 events 
 Break noiselessly 'neath those unheeding heights. 
 
 But still unspent, the ever-squandering sun 
 Scatters new lights that loiter not, but swarm 
 In sparkling legions on the denser clouds, 
 Still massed unstirred between the lower cliffs, 
 In counterfeit of such an ice-jammed stream 
 As chokes Norwegian fiords; when strangely rent 
 The solid-seaming floe dissolves its bonds, 
 And rolls its mocking icebergs lightly off 
 In buoyant fleets of wind-tossed fugitives 
 (The full-sailed argosies of airy bays), 
 Up each warm slope and into cooler skies. 
 
 But though morn calls, no living thing bestirs 
 Amid the graceless crags, no sweet lark sings, 
 
THE ASCENT. 67 
 
 No chippering swallow skims the frosty air, 
 No marmot whimpers, bleats no tender kid, 
 Nor hums a beetle from his hammock flower ; 
 But silently the tawny sunshine gives, 
 And silently the grisly rocks receive, 
 The wondrous transformation of the dawn. 
 
 And still the saffron meteors thicklier swarm 
 Than sparks from blacksmith's anvil when he 
 
 smites 
 The glowing bar, and swarming burst above 
 The snowy gates, and pour their multitudes 
 Adown the shadowy valleys, till they rouse 
 The darkest gorges with the glance of morn. 
 Then all the dewy lowlands smoke and steam, 
 Swift cascades glitter, cattle rise and feed, 
 And sober- visaged Switzers, young and old, 
 Drift out from chalets quaintly carved with 
 
 flowers 
 And pious legends, brown, deep-eaved, and low, 
 
68 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 And firmly anchored 'neath stone-ladened roofs, 
 To early toils of far-resplendent day. 
 
 Meanwhile our cragsmen, now beyond the wave 
 Of the great Gorner glacier, break the fast 
 Of fasting guides on " auf der Platte's " rock, 
 Which lies ice-girdled where begins the steep. 
 Thence small as flies, and slow as horned snails, 
 Cheered by the sun, their father in the flesh, 
 They pant along the snow-crust, full of life, 
 'Mid the pale death of Arctic sceneries, 
 And landscapes bare as scientific faiths ; 
 Such know the dreary souls in Labrador, 
 And polar bears round Greenland's glaciered 
 
 coast : 
 For Nature greets men here with savageries, 
 Offers no flowers, nor fruit, nor song of wak- 
 ing birds, 
 No mossy grove, nor hardship-scorning pine, 
 Nor place for rest, nor safety by the way ; 
 
THE ASCENT. 69 
 
 And though attired in white of virgin nun, 
 With face of saintly beauty, yet malign 
 Her heart, and, her kind motherhood renounced, 
 She seems step-mother strange, austere, and 
 
 cold, 
 But for man's ruin ready every hour, 
 And to his anxious life indifferent 
 As belted Saturn in his blameless sphere. 
 
 Now up steep bossy sides of crusted snow, 
 Night-chilled to hardness, fit to bear their 
 
 weight, 
 Their creaking steps ascend without a pause, — 
 A trifling climb, were this the way of all. 
 Rope-bound in line, lest some snow-screened 
 
 crevasse 
 Trip some unguarded foot, they wind along 
 Like doubling Reynard when the hounds give 
 
 chase : 
 Now lightly leap a maze of glacier chasms, 
 
70 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 Now, faces downward, crawl o'er wider gulfs 
 On thin snow bridges, frail as life in age, 
 Frozen o'er the blue and bottomless crevasse, 
 Where even the summer lying lies a-cold, 
 And that sharp trapper Death keeps set his 
 
 springs 
 To catch the rash transgressor unaware. 
 Now tangled in a net-work of wide pits 
 They wander dubiously, no outlet found ; 
 Or issuing thence dismayed behold their course 
 Decoying where the unharnessed avalanche 
 Runs down its trampling herds of startled snows, 
 And breathless flit across it one by one, 
 Afraid to speak, lest any sound stampede 
 Its deadly multitudes ; then lies their path 
 Where seracs huge, and nodding to their fall, 
 Lean toppling o'er an ice-slide's polished face, 
 To hurtle down anon in fragments fierce 
 With lonely clangor ; or, on crossing this 
 Like timid hares athwart the scent of hounds, 
 
THE ASCENT. 71 
 
 And taking to the cliff, they escalade 
 Its gnarled and guttered roughness, on its wall 
 Bruising their tender flesh, on its immensity 
 Embarked like nautilus with his frail sail 
 On the large surge of ocean's liquid round ; 
 Now creep they quivering up a narrow shelf, 
 Where squirrel scarce could run his pretty track ; 
 Now cling by thinnest crevices where fingers, 
 
 toes, 
 Pinched bloodless in the crannies, barely hold ; 
 Then crowd up some close chimney in the cliff 
 (No sooty sweep to narrower flues compelled), 
 Where ice-paved walls, smooth and precipitous, 
 Defy an essaying, save for notches cleft 
 By lusty axe-cuts of untiring guides ; 
 Glued to the palisade, with desperate clutch 
 Of taloned rock-swallows hanging by their nests, 
 They crush and squeeze along, or up or down 
 Or anywhere, as chance allows, unsure 
 Even so of outcome fortunate to toil. 
 
72 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 Sometimes in deadliest peril they evade 
 As by a miracle a rattling hail, 
 And furious cannonade of bowlders huge, 
 Shrill-humming stones, and tons of whizzing ice, 
 Dread salvos of a foe's artillery, 
 Discharged by skulking frost-imps overhead, 
 Who, keeping sleepless sentry all the year, 
 With these malignant volleys fend the ledge. 
 
 And so our travelers moil, and trudge along, 
 Panting for breath, with trembling knees, athirst 
 And faint, hands bleeding from the sharp-edged 
 
 rocks, 
 And tired hearts knocking 'gainst their seated 
 
 ribs; 
 Till, one cliff conquered, on its saw-like ridge 
 They sit secure, and gazing proudly down, — 
 Like daring boys astride a roof-tree keen, 
 And perilous to hold, or leave ; not long, 
 For soon they find the sturdy ice-clad spikes 
 Make cause of quarrel to their younger flesh ; 
 
THE ASCENT. 73 
 
 Though fondly clasped with more than lover's 
 
 warmth, 
 They give them welcome cold as foeman's steel. 
 
 But thus at last they overtake and win 
 
 The " Saddle's " windy seat conspicuous, 
 
 And camp them down for breathing-space and 
 
 food, 
 Indifferent lunch o'ertouched with wild surmise ; 
 For glancing 'cross the abysmal glacier-bed 
 Stretched far beneath them at a dizzy depth, 
 They mark great Lyskamm's shelving precipice, 
 That fronts them opposite, in black dismay, 
 "A thrilling type of dangers all their own ; 
 But vaunting still a prowess none the less 
 Than doughtier cragsmen boast, who still have 
 
 dared, 
 And conquered Lyskamm in his awfulness, 
 They draw not back, but brace their souls anew, 
 As men whom threats refresh, and re-resolve 
 To hale their quarry home, whate'er betide. 
 
74 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 Useless the feat and dire the .useless toil, 
 With trivial recompense for time waylaid ! 
 And why should men but delicately bred, 
 With soft white hands woo labors so austere, 
 And peril thus their world for one grand hour 
 Of martial conflict with intrepid Death ? 
 Why ? But that we are children of rude sires, 
 And with ancestral humors o'er-inf used ; 
 In us old ardors burn, wild instincts thrill, 
 Of our own will and motive innocent, 
 Which dim forefathers from their graves be- 
 queath. 
 As they were hunters, herdsmen, warriors bold, 
 We living in their flesh crave open fields, 
 Bleak hills and streams, dark woods and aim- 
 less toils. 
 Their habits strong, the customs of wild years, 
 Lurk deeply lodged in our less brutish strain, 
 And wake to hunt us now afield, and now 
 To sail far seas, or raise all-risking wars, 
 

 THE ASCENT. 75 
 
 And even to invent new dangers in our zest, 
 That so our dainty nerves may leap and thrill 
 With those fierce shivers of delight wherein 
 Our unhoused sires did spend their stormy lives. 
 Here in the wilderness we find old homes, 
 Ancestral acres lapsed but for a time, 
 Abandoned playmates now rejoined to claim 
 Our forfeit part in them inherited 
 From childhoods lost in dusky centuries 
 Of mouldered sires re-born again in us. 
 The mount, the moor, night, snow, and steep- 
 built crag, 
 With all that puts sweet life at threat'ning odds, 
 Though yesterday acquaintances of ours, 
 Come to us thus as oldest proven friends 
 And dear antagonists invincible, 
 From our unbreeched progenitors, who knew 
 And brothered them all so long ago ; 
 And dying left their turbulent comradeship, 
 A true love-gift, a blood inheritance, 
 
76 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 A legacy within our members hid 
 Of rippling nerve that leaps when dangers press, 
 A bandit craving for a bout with death, 
 Ourselves the priceless stake, — 'gainst nothing ! 
 And here on this bare crag we drink hilarity 
 In deep ancestral cups, and wassail keep 
 With fresh, bright air, that like a rustic wine 
 Intoxicates ; with sunshine, boisterous wind, 
 Large sky, free space, and blood that riotously 
 Invades the swollen veins ; the sense supreme 
 Of needless dangers met, defied, disdained, 
 And life exalted to an epic feat. 
 How tame, how poor unspeakably, the lot 
 Of travelers wheel-bound to dusty roads, 
 And dismal safety ! their only care to dine 
 Deliciously; their stern ambition then 
 Another day to drive, and dine as well. 
 
 But sport and jest here bubble gayly forth, 
 And laughter as of boys on holiday, 
 
THE ASCENT. 77 
 
 Makes life elate and young ; while each one still 
 Ignores the unfinished furlongs' dreadful steep, 
 And drunk with pleasure dreams no dream of 
 
 fear. 
 Then leap they to their feet again, refreshed, 
 And like Odysseus on iEgean seas, 
 Unsated with old pains and perils now foregone, 
 Stand gladly forth to seek adventures new. 
 
 Now falls a wildering mist, some rambling cloud, 
 And now a driving shower, thick mountain dew, 
 And then a dusty snow-flaw chokes the air 
 With pale frost-orchids, fluttering thickly down, 
 Breeding sharp winter in those summer skies ; 
 While Boreas blows his strident Alpine horn 
 About their ears with thought-confusing din, 
 And sings his ancient jocund jodel to the crag. 
 Then swift returns the sun in withering strength, 
 Turning December back to hot July, 
 And melting tired limbs with swooning heats. 
 
78 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 All weathers flit about the indifferent cliff, 
 Like martins round their summer-haunted eaves, 
 And flutter forth in weaving interchange, 
 Now cheerful, now severe, or wet, or dry, 
 Or hot, or cold, or gusty, or serene. 
 Mayhap a little cloud, mere cap-full of light fog, 
 Is gendered where they climb, and thunders 
 
 born 
 Of the quick-curdling mist growl furiously 
 With voices leonine about their steps, 
 While snaky lightnings hissing round their heads 
 From cloud to rock, dart forth their forked 
 
 threats, 
 As were the mountain spirits roused to guard 
 Their shrines invaded by intrusive guests. 
 
 Or should such awful chance befall, more dread 
 And worse than worst of that which coward 
 
 fear 
 Had forecast of, on some steep snow-side caught, 
 
TEE ASCENT. 79 
 
 Midway to perch of safety while they haste, 
 A sudden crack as of a pistol fired 
 Cleaves the still air with warning ominous, 
 That chills the blood within their startled heart. 
 And while they pause a breath in vague sur- 
 mise, 
 Their foothold strangely sinks a little space, 
 Then swiftly slips, then slides amain, and then, 
 Dragged downward with an awful, mighty rush, 
 Fast and still faster with a torrent's speed, 
 They pour along the steep no more as men, 
 But things, mere driftwood in a freshet flood, 
 Or tossing wreckage in a tempest surf, 
 Blinded and stifled with an icy dust, 
 Stunned by the thunderous roar, whirled now 
 
 aloft, 
 And now engulfed beneath the foamy snow, 
 In the living avalanche devoured quick, 
 They slide, ah luckless coasters ! headlong 
 down 
 
80 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 Towards some high brink, whence the abyss 
 
 yawns sheer. 
 No breath for words ! no time for thought ! no 
 
 place 
 For eager muscle ! guides, companions, all 
 O'ermastered in the unconquerable drift, 
 In Nature's grasp held powerless, atoms 
 Of her insensate frame, they fare as leaves 
 In the dark rush of wild November gales, 
 Or desert sands in the hot simooms' fell play ; 
 One gasp for breath, one strangled bitter cry, 
 And the wild snow closes smothering in, 
 And moulds their forms with icy lines about, 
 And crushes life out, and entombs them there, — 
 Nobler than kings Egyptian in their pyra- 
 mids, 
 Embalmed in the mountain mausoleum, 
 And part of all its grand unconsciousness 
 Forever. 
 
 Its still dream resumes the mount, 
 
THE ASCENT. 81 
 
 The sun his brightness keeps, for unto them 
 The living men are naught, and naught the 
 
 dead, 
 No more than snows that slide, or stones that 
 
 roll. 
 
 But voiding this, the extreme catastrophe, 
 Our mountaineers make good their dangerous 
 
 way ; 
 Though sore of foot, and with the snow-glare 
 
 dazed, 
 Their foreheads fretted with the prickly sweat, 
 They lag upon the path, and loiter slow. 
 Now joy departs, and grim endurance comes, 
 Unflinching Spartan trained to take the worst. 
 Oft crave they halt, and oft their mutinous eyes 
 Accuse the unstooping summit, still so high. 
 Give wings, the Andean condor's vasty stroke ! 
 Or thews, the nimble chamois' legs of steel ! 
 To clear exultantly the arduous space, 
 
 6 
 
82 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 That mocks them laggards, and derides their 
 
 march. 
 In vain ! no Jove-sent # eagle stoops his flight, 
 As once for love to fair-limbed Ganymede, 
 From circles empyrean to their aid ; 
 From far Arabia no genii haste 
 To waft them through divided airs on high. 
 Their staggering muscles still must strain, 
 Of their own blood must courage spring ; 
 And soon, for lo, the greatest horror last ! 
 Danger undreamed of, monstrous, measure- 
 less! 
 The final ArSte, the toothed and shaggy rib 
 Of that sky-piercing spire, that from the base 
 So delicate and dainty smooth appeared, 
 Uprears its ragged length, — the only path. 
 Scarce Strasburg's tower more perilous to 
 
 climb ! 
 A bent, keen-pointed scimitar of crag 
 Set upright on its hilt, with scant an edge 
 
THE ASCENT. 83 
 
 More broad than Moslem's bridge to Paradise, 
 And deeply gashed in elemental wars, 
 It cuts the clouds, and cleaves compacted storms. 
 Above our climbers' heads so dizzily 
 It reaches on, and on, beyond weak sight, 
 Flouting poor skill, and cooling braggart 
 tongues. 
 
 Who shall attempt that fanged and serrate rim ? 
 Who wrestle death on that perfidious wedge, 
 Sleet-mailed and bitten by the vicious winds? 
 Who scale that footless perch, a crazy stair 
 For suicides and angered souls 
 Of life a-weary? Clear half a thousand feet 
 Of panic peril, either frenzied flank, 
 A pitiless, nerve-shaking precipice, 
 Shoots down to lancet-pointed rocks, a bed 
 Of heartless cheer to him who falls. Well now 
 May weaklings quail, for boldest mountaineers 
 Of earlier centuries turned their backs 
 
84 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 On this grim devil's ladder, whence one slip 
 Were quick perdition, and the last ; but so 
 They left to better-metaled Englishmen 
 The shining hour of those who dare and win. 
 
 Yet now the stalwart shoulders of a guide 
 Will bear the timid o'er it, if one choose 
 To save his courage for brave hours of talk. 
 But few will flinch where hardier souls lead on. 
 Stolid with old resolve our comradeship, 
 Their faces set as flint and hearts as hard, 
 All wordless grasp that thin hand - breadth of 
 
 stone, 
 That sleeted edge, that sun-groined icicle, 
 To dangle there 'twixt cliff and sky, and climb, 
 Worse than the pendant Icelander, who gropes 
 Along the wave-washed sea-crags to despoil 
 The eider's downy nest, despising death 
 If so his brood lie warm. 
 
 Now hand and foot, 
 
THE ASCENT. 85 
 
 Your best of cunning lend ! each muscle now 
 Be tense as steel, flexible as withe ! 
 Quick-eyed, cool-nerved, stout-hearted all, 
 Cleave to those rock-teeth with the clutch of 
 
 fate! 
 Make sure your foothold, grappled to each step ! 
 Let no confusing glances stray to sound 
 The windy gulfs of those brain-whirling voids ! 
 Be shrewd to shun each rocking stone, each 
 
 wreath 
 Of frozen snow out-drifted o'er the abyss ! 
 Grow like an ivy to a crumbling tower, 
 And, creeping push your wary way above, 
 And still above, and yet again above ! 
 No mirth nor word enlivens now the task, 
 No vagrant eye, no playful sportiveness 
 Nor idle thought relieves the grinding toil. 
 Breathless and voiceless drag they toilsome on ; 
 Point after point they take, expecting each 
 To be the last, and still in each deceived. 
 
86 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 An hour, a tedious, tardy-footed hour 
 Of dogged clamber, then the slender tip, 
 Goal of their search, desired long with pain, 
 Draws nearer, nearer to delighted sight, 
 The haughty crest bates its unbending pride ; 
 Supreme 'mid heaven an isle of lonely stone, 
 One stable speck 'mid shoreless seas of air, 
 It waits their conquering steps; then tranquil 
 
 still 
 As marble Juno in her seated calm, 
 The Monte Rosa in her stateliness 
 Receives them bustling where they proudly 
 
 come, 
 And yields them transient lodgment where for 
 
 aye 
 She dwells 'neath pure resplendent snows, her 
 
 crown ; 
 Nor lends her heed to their exhausted cheer 
 Which dies still-born in that high solitude, 
 And echoless void of sky. But they glad 
 
THE ASCENT. 87 
 
 As far-spent swimmers on a longed-for beach, 
 Not waiting, throw themselves along, and laugh 
 A silent laugh, sweeping a free glance round 
 The ringed horizon of the circle-world, 
 Where dimmed sight fails in purple depths of 
 space. 
 
II. 
 
 THE SUMMIT. 
 
 And what a vision greets their weary gaze ! 
 What realms of wonder, chaos of wild dreams 
 Out-chaosed, kingdoms and seas of tumult ! 
 A granite continent asunder torn, 
 And plowed as though fierce earthquakes oft 
 
 had driven 
 Their shares beneath its rocky ribs, and turned 
 Their crossing furrows here ; or as one day 
 The welded globe itself o'er-strained had burst 
 With swift explosion of all elements 
 Revolted 'gainst their holdings, and discharged 
 Its ragged fragments on offending plains. 
 Alp upon* Alp, mount upon mountain piled ! 
 Ridges sublime towered with sublimer peaks ! 
 
THE SUMMIT. 89 
 
 Valaisiatt, Oberland, and Dauphine, 
 
 Graian, and Cottian, and Maritime ! 
 
 Range behind range banked to the bended skies, 
 
 And proudly burnished by the full-orbed sun ! 
 
 Huge forms in armies, fresh as had they risen 
 
 An hour ago, and dressed their glittering ranks ; 
 
 Like hosts of fair-skinned Northmen on foray, 
 
 Encamped afield in Gothic turbulence, 
 
 Scarce chief obeying, loyal to small law, 
 
 And white their mighty tents, as pitched but 
 
 yesterday. 
 All living Vikings seem, about to move 
 And clash their armor, while they ask who 
 
 comes 
 Intruding on their guarded bivouac. 
 The nearest thus : 
 
 The further masses merged 
 Through wild disorders to far-stretching lines, 
 That fortressed cities feign, the nameless burgs 
 Of superhuman folk, the precipice 
 
90 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 Their frowning rampart, cloucUgirt peaks their 
 
 towers, 
 Impassable ravines their moats of dread, 
 Bastions unstormed save of the jealous heavens. 
 Their parapets a wondrous sky-line draw, 
 With pyramids, rude Memnons, monoliths 
 Adorned as had dead Egypt lent her spoil, 
 Or greater than Egyptian built him new, 
 And vaster, marked with older hieroglyphs 
 Than Luxor boasts, or buried Nineveh ; 
 Scriptures of thrust and strain, of fracture, fire, 
 And frost, by those perpetual scribes, who 
 
 scrawled 
 These no man's records of a no man's day. 
 Here as the distance lengthens, spire and crag 
 Draw in perspective to vast colonnades, 
 To which St. Peter's are as river reeds 
 To California's pines, fading in haze 
 Beyond, where faint as truth when new the last, 
 Their bases lost in grosser atmospheres, 
 Hang strangely pendant to the arch of heaven. 
 
THE SUMMIT. 91 
 
 How vast the magic-builded spectacle ! 
 
 Unearthly architectures, frost-temples, 
 
 And winter palaces of nature ! Sure 
 
 Some Goth Aladdin must have set the slaves 
 
 Of lamp and ring in their uncanny tribes, 
 
 At bitter labors here to pile these towers 
 
 In numbers so innumerable ! 
 
 First show the great Valaisians, told before ; 
 
 Then dreamily beyond the ribbon Rhone 
 
 •The tall Bernesers of the Oberland, 
 
 Pillars of cloud by day, at dusk of fire. 
 
 Their chief, if chief may be 'mid such great peers, 
 
 Grave Finster-Aarhorn's storm-girt pinnacle, 
 
 Whose tower of silence mocks the wrecking 
 
 years ; 
 Then vestal Jungfrau, Amazon of maids, 
 As for long-hindered nuptials still attired, 
 Whose safe charms ten thousand rosy sunsets 
 Flush with warm hues of youth, renewed in vain ; 
 Next, her severe confessor, white-friar Monch, 
 
92 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 Eldest Carthusian, ere Carthusians were, 
 Prevents fair Jungfrau from the sculptured 
 
 strength 
 Of comely Eiger, knightly in his grace ; 
 There Blumlis-Alp laments her blighted flowers, 
 Gay asters, gentian blue, pale edelweiss, 
 Whose nameless sweetness made that high air 
 
 glad, 
 Till, balked of lady's love, a wizard foul 
 Her green fields buried 'neath charmed sheets 
 
 of snow; 
 There cloud-capped Wetterhorn's cathedral pile, 
 Source of perennial streams ; its minster towers 
 Fret the bright sky with various tracery. 
 
 Leave these, and front another heaven, and lo ! 
 Another pageant and a rival pomp : 
 For distant Grivola looms silvery soft 
 Against the south, where slant and sleep, 
 In wondrous peacefulness unvisited, 
 
THE SUMMIT. 93 
 
 The wide white meadows of Grand Paradis 
 Enringed in black-mailed arms of scowling crag ; 
 The wind-tormented crest of Les Ecrins 
 Smoking in stony surge mid smoking clouds, 
 And Monte Viso islanded in mist, 
 Sustained by heart of rock against Time's en- 
 mity; 
 While eastward Piz Bernina's wimpled hood 
 Upon the last horizon, — or is 't a cloud 
 Far-glistening o'er the frosty Engadine ? 
 And west, Mt. Blanc serene, whose perfect dome 
 Shames silver cupolas of all the Czars 
 To beggary, uprolls his lordly head 
 From out the speary thick of his Aiguilles, 
 And looks unchallenged monarch, o'er his peers, 
 To stately Rosa, — king to his crowned queen. 
 
 Below, so far that even the pirate hawk, 
 Swooping for prey above the living fields, 
 Would never spy what in the hollow hides, 
 
94 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 Pinched gorges knit their unrelenting brows, 
 And fertile valleys, rich with corn and vine, 
 Bend their sweet stream-like curves as they 
 
 were grooved 
 By pushing glaciers of the chillier prime, 
 That with their icy horns gored through the 
 
 rock, 
 And scourged the goodly meadows in their wrath, 
 Slaying whole tribes of feather, fur, and fin. 
 Here winds the deep, rock-bastioned Wispach 
 
 vale, 
 Perpetual acre of immortal death, 
 And playground of all perils, where disport 
 The stealthy village-smothering avalanche, 
 The frightful land-slip, when the half-mount 
 
 slides 
 From its high vantage ruining to the plain ; 
 The earthquake's shuddering mischief from deep 
 
 ground, 
 The bursting glacier's deluge unrestrained 
 
THE SUMMIT. 95 
 
 Of giant ice-blocks swimming on swift floods, 
 
 In awful inundation charging down 
 
 Upon the helpless valley laid asleep, 
 
 And sweeping off the herds, the crops, the soil, 
 
 Dear lowly homes and families of men. 
 
 There the Anzasca Canon, — fissure choked 
 
 'Twixt throttling cliffs, that ban health-giving 
 
 suns 
 Save at the top of noon, and foul disease 
 Engender 'mid its large sublimities. 
 There happier Alagna's bowery gorge, 
 Idyl of rippling foliage and gray stone, 
 Where frothy cascades cool from springs of snow 
 Fling out the drenching spray to weeping boughs 
 That droop their pendulous leafage heavily ; 
 The glossy chestnut blooms, the odorous birch 
 And sweetly fruitful fig with laurels blend 
 Immingling on the war-worn cheeks and brows 
 Of mammoth bowlders, thick-strewn everywhere, 
 A storm of rocky fragments thundered down 
 
96 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 From Rosa's awful summit in the clouds, 
 And left as harmless ruins moss-grown here. 
 There Gressonay her broader vale expands 
 In gentle swales mown bare as fresh-reaped 
 
 fields 
 By the keen glacier-draught that reaps unceas- 
 ingly ; 
 While lower slopes yield to Italian suns 
 Rich Southern fruits ungrudgingly bestowed 
 On the Teutonic strangers lingering there 
 Mayhap from ancient forays long forgot. 
 Fleet-footed brooklets, nurslings of the hills, 
 Run gayly down each valley, full of haste, 
 Gurgling to night and day their wordless song ; 
 And other vales beside unfurl their folds, 
 D'Ayas, Tournache, Pelline, and nameless more, 
 That fan-like ray towards every vagrant wind, 
 Towards Greek Marseilles and Lyons' silken 
 
 mart ; 
 Geneva, dear to Calvin and Voltaire, 
 
THE SUMMIT. 97 
 
 Of creed and cavil the unaureoled saints ; 
 Towards Nurnberg old, and Munich new by art ; 
 The sea-queen Venice, Turin, lair of kings; 
 And that low Mediterranean wave, 
 Where boy Columbus oared his baby skiff, 
 Upon its tamer billows nursing heart 
 To dare the wild Atlantic's unsailed surge, 
 And seeking old worlds hap to find a new; 
 Towards Como's castled shores, Maggiore's isles, 
 Where doves coo soft mid pure camelias' bloom, 
 And Milan, whose still white cathedral walls 
 Resent the whiter snow-lifts of these hills. 
 
III. 
 
 WITH NATURE. 
 
 But what a sight for men of burgs and glebes ! 
 
 Such mighty circumstance, imperial pomp 
 
 Out-braving all they boast of rich and great ! 
 
 Intolerable commonplace disdained, 
 
 And costliest majesties made friendly ! 
 
 The high brought low, the low sunk to the 
 
 abyss ! 
 The haughty mountains leveled with the eye ! 
 The earth-despising clouds beneath one's feet 
 Confounded with the fields they still contemn ! 
 The solid dome of firmament, that seemed 
 To roof this crest, dissolves to breathing air, 
 And breathing ether late one's native air 
 Seen deep below shows like a lucid sea 
 
WITH NATURE. 99 
 
 Spread in blue bays and gulfs of atmosphere, 
 Where wave the trees as trailing water-weeds 
 Wherein men rove as fish in denser seas, 
 And seek their food, and find it in their kind, 
 And find life dear, and full of changeful charm, 
 And loathe to leave it, loving all its ways. 
 A universe reversed ! heavens new, new earth ! 
 Bosomed in peacefulness and sunny sleep. 
 Mid-winter here, with tropic summer yon ! 
 A long, long climb of ever-climbing line ! 
 A fairy world of snow-peaks pale with height, 
 And glacier-jeweled, draperied with fog ; 
 Unsmiling pines that sentinel the crags, 
 And ambuscade the gorges, whose gnarled arms 
 Catch out at every vagabond of cloud 
 Found loitering in their camps ; hamlets faint 
 Between long tongues of glacier, perched so high 
 It seems their villagers must live in heaven ; 
 So steeply slant, their farms one day must slide 
 With crop and chalet to the crouching vales ; 
 
100 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 And rarely lodged on some out-thrusting ledge 
 The pious chapel set, trace of man's pain ; 
 The swooning lowlands as a garden rolled ; 
 The sheeted lakes, and soundless waterfalls, 
 And litter of gray shingle everywhere ! 
 
 One broods o'er all in silence nigh to death, 
 Scarce breathing lest the magic spectacle 
 Like sleep-spun dreams dissolving fade and pass, 
 And leave the old horizon long outworn, 
 Wherein his life has wasted heretofore. 
 The formless air in twinkling ripples stirred 
 Its shimmering ether pours around the whole, 
 Gold, amber, azure, amaranth, and pearl, 
 All colors blended in its lucent films, 
 That smooth the rough, and make the savage 
 
 fair, 
 Weaving the mazy interrupted lines 
 Of thwarted range, and rudely-cloven ravine 
 In one vast complex of grand harmonies, 
 
WITH NATURE. 101 
 
 Where every chaos melts to ordered grace. 
 Not great Beethoven riding on the blasts 
 Of his melodious passion at its height 
 More graciously doth blend his storm of 
 
 sound, — 
 Its swelling angers, its heart-piercing pains, 
 Its outbursts of deep joy, that die away 
 To breathless peace wherein the soul finds 
 
 God, — 
 In symphonies imperishable as man, 
 Than greater Nature sways this rocky storm, 
 This hideous turbulency, and barren wreck 
 Of shattered continent to harmonies 
 Ethereal, majestic, wild, serene, 
 One strain untroubled of harsh discords born. 
 Drifts o'er the whole a spell of utter sleep, 
 A silence deep as that of midnight skies, 
 So undisturbed that all a picture seems, 
 And we the painted men impassively 
 As figures on the unrolled canvas set. 
 
102 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 Far spins that truant ball our whilom earth ! 
 A little length, such as a man might pace 
 Within an idle hour upon the plain, 
 Hath raised us up to some celestial realm, 
 Whence we look strangely down upon this globe 
 As on an exile planet swinging clear 
 Its rounded ball in airy space beneath ; 
 Some nearer moon through telescope descried, 
 A stranger orb, and foreign to our feet : 
 Though vaguely deem we still that once we 
 
 knew 
 Its scenes, and lived its troubled citizens, 
 In days long gone, and wearily forgot. 
 
 But what is this lighter than infant's breath, 
 No mist, nor voice, nor viewless herald's touch, 
 Yet sure some Presence rare, impalpable, 
 Through void skies leaning towards the skyey 
 
 peak, 
 Which streams, a spectral form diaphonous, 
 
WITH NATURE. 103 
 
 Above the high-piled ranges near and far, 
 The sunless deep defiles, and farthest stretch 
 Of copious distance, to the cloudy verge 
 Of bounded space ? More faint than zephyr's 
 
 breath 
 It lays soft spells upon us and overcomes 
 Our thought : 
 
 Is it some Genius of the hill ? 
 The Spirit of the peak, that ne'er descends 
 To disenchanted leas, but here at home 
 A dainty Ariel and delicate 
 Sways glimmering, wavering, whispering every- 
 where ? 
 
 Phantom most strange, elusive, general! 
 Divine World-Spirit ! universal Power ! 
 Soul of things visible in deep response 
 To what seems soul in us, — our greater self — 
 Out-breathing from vast Nature in her wilds ! 
 The Pan so loved and tenderly adored 
 
104 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 When men were artless children ! Faintly falls 
 Its breeze-born voice abroad unsyllabled, 
 Scarce heard above the heart-beats, and yet 
 
 seems 
 Burdened with utterance of mysteries 
 That crowd around our being from its birth. 
 And each ear listens reverently subdued ; 
 Savage or saint, savant or dreamless man 
 Of shrewd affairs, or he whom life has drained 
 Of all sweet fearfulness, alike lends heed. 
 A messenger and message comes unsought, 
 A phantom touch plays lightly o'er his sense, 
 A brush of ghostly wings invisible 
 Makes rustle near his heart ; the mountain god 
 Approaches his high seat ; and deeply moved 
 With ancient Hebrew of a rural faith 
 He looks up to the hills whence comes his Help ; 
 Or with wild Aryan warriors, kindred old, 
 Sees in the peerless white Himalaya 
 The Brama's shining home with His strong 
 
 gods ; 
 
WITH NATURE. 105 
 
 Or half believes, even late as yesterday, 
 With oft-defeated guides that Spirits strong 
 Hold safe the keep of frowning Matterhorn, 
 While yet that rock beat all vain climbers back. 
 And still a God ! a God ! rapt feeling cries ; 
 His face makes beauty in that formless air, 
 His hand weaves splendors of that flimsy mist, 
 He builds a magic into crag and glen, 
 And with His living presence cunningly 
 Blends scene and seer to one accordant joy. 
 So trembling through the landscape like a sun 
 That breaks in drizzly dawn on ice-mailed trees 
 And glances fitfully down prismed boughs, 
 A thousand suns where yet no light shines clear, 
 This glimmering presence faint and fugitive 
 Breaks coyly from the prospect everywhere, 
 And sparkling like frail dew-drops deftly hides, 
 As were one glint enough, in mystery. 
 
 Of old, beholders close to nature held 
 Found mighty gods and glorious enough 
 
106 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 In these pale visions of an unknown world: 
 Dyaus, old Kronos, Zeus the son of Time, 
 Demeter-earth, bright Helios, and Jove 
 The cloud-compeller, Pallas wise, strong Mars, 
 Dew-bearing Dawn on mead-besprinkled steeds, 
 A god for every cloud, and tree, and stream, 
 Till glamour made the world a home of ghosts 
 And plain meek earth, creature of airs and soils, 
 Robbed of her daily powers and homely use 
 Became a baleful sacredness and vain, 
 While men went groping for the rainbow's gold, 
 Or begging life where but the lifeless stood, 
 And seeking gods where subtlest elements 
 Their mightier service proffered unperceived. 
 
 Would gods were present ! How would doubt- 
 ing men 
 Give them high greeting and dear reverence due ! 
 But none comes nearer, none breaks through, 
 Nor rends the unlif ted veil ; no clear wise word 
 
WITH NATURE. 107 
 
 Drifts softly forth from out the insensate noise ; 
 
 A goodly world unhaunted lies serene 
 
 In its sufficing loveliness ; no more ! 
 
 The vagrant voice is but an errant wind, 
 
 A sea-shell's murmurous nothing oft rehearsed. 
 
 Such helpless voice divine Prometheus heard, 
 
 And deemed it ample in his heat of rage, 
 
 When chained on Caucasus, as fire to flint, 
 
 Groaning he lay, and praying for some god 
 
 To rescue him unhappy, ate his great heart out, 
 
 The while he dreamed Zeus' vulture battened 
 
 on it. 
 Now is his Hercules become a name 
 For solar myth, and his tormentor Zeus, 
 With all his brilliant compeers, left for dead, 
 And dead the fires that on their altars blazed ; 
 No longer sit their councils on the hills, 
 Nor flash their forms before the impassive sun, 
 Nor stoop they now to men in battle's stress, 
 Nor from the solemn cave breathe oracles. 
 
108 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 But pushed by ruthless Science in her quest 
 From secret haunts whereof their hearts were 
 
 glad, 
 They cease from gorge or peak to be discerned, 
 Retired indignant to the farthest star, 
 Where man may never hail them till he die. 
 So vainly strain man's eager eyes, his ears 
 As vainly hearken ; the wavering mists 
 Close round veiled Isis hidden as of old, 
 Nor open through to Deity whom thus 
 By searching none finds out ; still vainly beat, 
 As butterflies their fickle-spotted wings, 
 Our rainbow hopes against the mail of secrets ; 
 The Mysteries keep their visors closed 
 On peak and plain, nor write their legend out 
 On rock or temple anywhere ; and still 
 They challenge each new-comer, what reply 
 His life or lips may frame respecting them, 
 While they restrain their tongues from telling, 
 
 yea, 
 
WITH NATURE. 109 
 
 Or nay, concerning human destiny ; 
 
 And like the dead keep silence unperturbed. 
 
 And yet the charm remains; the wizard spell 
 Weaves sweet delusions round the willing sense, 
 As round the swaying cobra with his reeds 
 The wily Indian weaves a thrall of sounds. 
 The disillusioned mountains keep their state ; 
 Eyes dew with tears beholding, raptures thrill 
 To pain ; soft silence brushes babbling tongues ; 
 The beautiful, bewildering immensity 
 O'erpowers our souls with longing vague, and 
 
 sweet. 
 We cease from thought, and shade our mortal 
 
 brows, 
 Our eyes are not attempered to such light, 
 Our hearts not strung to such large harmonies. 
 The two-fold glory of the earth and sky 
 Far-stretching to their one horizon line 
 Subdues us utterly ; we seem unfleshed ; 
 
110 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 Like homeless frigate-birds that freely live 
 On ever-outstretched wing untiringly, 
 The swift imagination spreads her plumes 
 For one immortal flight o'er all eye sees, 
 And all that lies unseen beyond, to touch 
 The rim and verge of last infinity; 
 In vain ! her pinions droop while yet 
 She skims the threshold ; astronomic spaces 
 Are too wide ; and then all space and endless 
 
 time 
 Come crowding on to ask inclusion due 
 Within the airy voyage ere 't is done ; 
 Mid-heaven fails its strength, falters its quest 
 Disquieted, dismayed, exhausted thought 
 Can only gasp, whence came all this, and why, 
 And whither goes, and what shall be its end, 
 And ours who ask ? And get no answer clear, 
 Not from the earth out-rolled, nor ocean gray, 
 Nor from the spacious heaven o'er-domed, nor 
 
 from 
 
WITH NATURE. Ill 
 
 The ambitious mind with its increasing powers : 
 
 But baffled still one lingers as in trance 
 
 Full of surmises indolently vague, 
 
 Then fearless launches out on vacancy, 
 
 In search of some strong Maker undisclosed, 
 
 Whom no thought measures, but whose hope 
 
 transports, 
 As noble music when at piercing heights 
 It beats the troubled air to ecstasy, 
 And lifts the spirit speechless into bliss. 
 Seems all a sight from Mount Delectable, 
 Gateway, and garden of lost Paradise, 
 A heavenly land where no man knows of pain. 
 
 So Nature ! with thy strong enchantments, thou 
 Dost work thy will on us thy children fond, 
 Till falling on thy breast enraptured, prone, 
 We ache to know thy heart, and heart of hearts, 
 And swooning in thy beauty crave thy grace. 
 But unconcerned thou dost elude us still, 
 
112 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 And keep us at a distance half estranged, 
 And though we are thy children, feel thy pulse, 
 And genial throb of being in each vein, 
 Yet never close we with thee perfectly, 
 Chilled in our passion, in our love restrained 
 By thy composed and sweet indifference ; 
 Though still like doting children must we love, 
 And bless thee our enchanter, till we die. 
 
 So lightly dost thou hold us, and so cool 
 Thy custom, and demeanor, Nature ! that 
 No more than for dumb beast, or growing flower, 
 Thou dost concern thyself for us, or care ! 
 Yet to ourselves we seem thy master work, 
 Thy crown, and jewels in thy crown, so high, 
 That o'er thyself in swelling syllables 
 We proudly vaunt, and boasting make loud 
 
 claim 
 To greatness greater than thine own, 
 To higher lineage, diviner end, 
 
WITH NATURE. 113 
 
 And destiny excelling thine, as sun tlie stars ; 
 But thou in thy serene complacency 
 Dost heed our claim no whit, dost treat us still 
 As wayside accidents, as mists of morn, 
 And like a mist dissolvest us to nothing. 
 
 So small are we indeed and vain ! to whom 
 These trifling ranges of repeated ridge, 
 These trivial knolls seem mighty, lying here 
 A mower's swath, or weathered windrow raked 
 Upon the uncumbered rondure of large earth, 
 Or rank of haycocks waiting for the wain 
 On the good farmer's closely-shaven mead. 
 The shortness of our stature measuring all. 
 Is guilty of their mightiness to us, 
 As his slight body makes his bushel-heap 
 To the atom-ant an ample hill, whereon 
 His grand affairs transacted ripen apace ; 
 But easily our girdled globe doth roll 
 
114 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 Its circle full, and smooth, though roughened 
 
 thus 
 By these huge jutting promontories 
 Within its orb, as rolls an orange true 
 Upon its wrinkled rind ; our smallness sole 
 Makes them so great. Insects of space are we, 
 By our own globe and habitation dwarfed 
 To crickets on its rugous continents, 
 That chirp their shining summer hour, and 
 
 cease ; 
 While earth itself a petty star, and mean 
 With Sirius, or far Aldebaran, 
 Compared, or any nightly orb, swings on 
 Its annual round scarce noticed mid the spheres. 
 Insects of bounded space, and straitened time ! 
 To whom these hills eternal seem, so old 
 Their recent day, so fixed their crags ! while 
 
 they 
 With ceaseless waste consume their rocky 
 
 strength, 
 
WITH NATURE. 115 
 
 And feel their vast antiquity to be 
 
 But as a breathless second on the score 
 
 Of that eternity, whose ages blind 
 
 Fleet as the clock-ticks sound their passing by. 
 
 While we as music of a player's horn 
 
 Blare out upon the silence and are done. 
 
 But small or large, what matter ! what we are, 
 
 we are. 
 Naught cares the well-housed tortoise in his 
 
 shell 
 That he is yet nor hare nor swallow fleet. 
 Still bound our nerves with exultations, hopes ; 
 Still breathe we this high air with rapture, still 
 See earth dilated to a palace large, 
 Roofed with blue bravery of the cloud-sailed 
 
 sky, 
 Lit by the unnumbered lustres of the sun, 
 
 Swept by the wandering custom of all winds, 
 
 Home of dark grandeurs, and fair loveliness ; 
 
116 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 Our fathers' home and to our children dear, 
 Scene of the million happy human lives, 
 That crowd its continents, and sail its seas. 
 O Earth ! too little is thy fullness bruited forth, 
 Too much absorbed in men man lives untouched 
 By thy unceasing movement, endless calm, 
 And loses oft his soul in drudgeries 
 That bring no joy nor lead to ampler life. 
 And still thou liest smilingly content 
 Unsmitten by contradiction and unvexed, 
 Thy hills uplifted like a fairy's boon, 
 And with no words dost call us, offering 
 Not grain alone but gladness in thy face, 
 With good and fair and whatso'er gives power. 
 Rejected, feared, or scorned, neglected still 
 With quiet patience as of sleeping child 
 Thou leavest all for all, and him that takes 
 Thy meaning thou dost fill with gracious gifts, 
 And such rare transport, that the vanished gods 
 Seem re-disclosed to him, and daedal earth 
 
f WITH NATURE. 117 
 
 Enough without a better heaven ; for him 
 Comes each new day a fairy prince to kiss 
 His lips, and waken him to larger life, 
 Bring him the royal sun, the pensive moon, 
 The deep, uncounted stars, the rolling change 
 Of seasons old as sea sweet wooing airs, 
 Or storms of overwhelming majesty, 
 The magic mystery of being, all 
 To draw him out of stony moods of gloom, 
 To fill his days with hours of beaten gold, 
 To touch his nature with the strength of hills, 
 To cool his brow with freshness of blithe morns, 
 To give his mind the large horizon's span, 
 And to his heart the peace of sunny wolds. 
 Such dreams salute us on this air-girt top, 
 And summit of the world ; our souls escape 
 To novel liberties, franchises strange ; 
 We rend the withes of custom, rise and fall 
 Infuriate on the coarse Philistine hordes 
 Of common thought, stale reason, and mean use, 
 
118 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 Rebuke our wrinkled creeds, conceits, weak 
 
 fears, 
 And all that hinders from unleashed desire ; 
 Ourselves we free as birds, — the libertines 
 Of heaven's azure fields : no hurrying cloud, 
 Nor yon unmastered eagle sailing lone, 
 Whose seldom-striking pinions fan the winds 
 Of farthest continents, while he not recks 
 What land swims small beneath him, soars 
 
 more free. 
 Us now, repentant skeptics, takes the god ; 
 Our blood runs wild like those who, drunk with 
 
 wine, 
 Danced madly in the ancient mysteries, 
 And whirled in Maenad rout, and cried aloud 
 Evoe, Bacche ! Ah, Evoe, hail ! 
 And felt the god suffusing every sense 
 That with the orgy all of self expired. 
 And we are drunk with Nature at her feast, 
 We are ourselves the genii of the peaks ; 
 
WITH NATURE. 119 
 
 We call to Lyskamm, Breithorn, Matterhorn, 
 To Weisshorn in the distance, Mischabel, 
 And every shining summit far and near, 
 To hail them as our brothers, living parts 
 Of great organic nature one with us ; 
 And with that chained Prometheus on his rock, 
 We cry, O Ocean old, and ye gray mists, 
 And swift-winged breezes, and much-laughing 
 
 waves, 
 All-seeing sun, and earth our mother dear, 
 Gods of the prime, in the white dawn of man, 
 We keep to you this day a revelry, 
 Ancestral, not Semitic, Aryan pure, 
 And to us Aryans kin, as at your shrines 
 We worship with the souls of cousins gone, 
 Who, living once as now we live, still found 
 In you their strength, their wonder, and their 
 
 Admit us to your mysteries ; make large 
 Our hearts with benedictions new, 
 
120 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 Give us to cherish all your mighty laws, 
 
 To love your sights, your sounds, your secret 
 
 powers, 
 And with you liye unsaddened, unreproached, 
 Till we lie down beneath you undisturbed. 
 As some worn saint from penance drear re- 
 leased, 
 And floating out of tortured flesh to God, 
 Beholds draw near the imperishable dawn 
 Whose peaceful hope receives the holy dead, 
 So drifting in our mountain ecstasy, 
 And bathed in dreamy atmospheres we see 
 Approaching through a vast of space, the peace 
 That folds the round world in its soft embrace 
 And bounds of being as an ether folds 
 The tethered planets in their heavenly rings. 
 
IV. 
 
 THE DESCENT. 
 
 But though enraptured, men may not abide 
 On Monte Rosa's slender point, nor build 
 Their tabernacles amid its clouds, 
 Plain-nurtured creatures, they the plain require. 
 The genial noontide dies to ugly night, 
 And night so near the stars is harsh with cold, 
 While shameless hunger coming like a dun 
 To splendid palace doors sues fretfully ; 
 For whom grows naught on this heaven-pierc- 
 ing spire. 
 One lingering here would find his frugal fare 
 Leaner than forage of starved grasshoppers 
 That cling to mullein seared by nipping frosts 
 Of late September to brown barrenness. 
 
122 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 So now prosaic guides discreetly wise, 
 Upgathering all their gear command descent. 
 And all the more that the low, lonely wind 
 Lifts to a louder key its drony hum 
 Spinning a thread of snow from each slim spire, 
 That like a hairy comet streams abroad, 
 Of coming tempest harbinger, and flag. 
 Now urge foreboding guides unwonted speed; 
 In haste run all, like fleeing Israel, 
 To that unshorn Arete, again to swing 
 Unhappy bodies there, in dismal case, 
 And curse its raveled raggedness, with sighs 
 That flesh were harder or tall rock more soft. 
 Another lunacy, that grim descent, 
 Unlike good Vergil's facile road to hell ! 
 The upward perils doubly perilous 
 Recur ; the uncertain feet grope blindly down, 
 No eye their hold foreseeing; painfully 
 The hands let go the unwonted grasp above. 
 And while like seals on land they fumble on 
 
THE DESCENT. 123 
 
 With cumbrous care, like gliding seals at sea 
 The rapid tempest skims the etherial wave, 
 Borne on more winds than jEolus held, that fall 
 Like birds of prey with furious beak and claw 
 Upon the mangled ridge, their ancient quarry, 
 Unconquered still through blustering centuries, 
 Nor giving heed to those poor human mice, 
 That creep in mortal danger down its face. 
 And what a place for men in such a war 
 Of elements unloosed ! an ice-glazed edge 
 Of crag, whereon the sturdy mountain goat 
 For all his climbing were afraid ! A gale 
 Would pluck the ruffled falcon from his perch, 
 Or sweep the windy crow down leagues of sky ! 
 Three miles of storm-swept space above the 
 
 round 
 And general globe, with but this untrimmed 
 
 spar, 
 This stony topmast of the good ship " Earth " 
 To hang by. Even the night-wrapped sea-boy 
 
124 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 Upon the switching yards when waves swim 
 
 high, 
 And drench the humming cordage, is less far 
 From gentle safety ; while scurrying fogs 
 Thicker than banks of metaphysic cloud, 
 And drearier, close darkly in, as night 
 Itself were falling out of time ; flies swift 
 The petaled snow, and crooked lightnings strike 
 From cloud to cliff mid thunderous echoes 
 
 roused. 
 Now life's sweet wine to bitter wormwood turns ; 
 The beauteous Day deforms her shining face, 
 And hides a withered crone beneath the skies ; 
 All landmarks disappear, all sight cut off, 
 The wide world narrows to an eagle's roost; 
 The men are left alone, they and the storm. 
 Chilled, blinded, stiff, hands freezing, freezing 
 
 feet, 
 They still hold on their formidable way, 
 Wrapping that hateful twist of stone about, 
 
THE DESCENT. 125 
 
 As pendulous spider wraps his slender thread 
 With all his legs, yet making tardiest way ; 
 And now they swing from axe-head planted deep 
 Above, now slip roped fast down dripping ici- 
 cles, 
 Or scramble warily mid loosened stones, 
 That tottering drop to soundless depths below. 
 And oft the anxious guide's sharp cry rings out 
 Above the roar of storm, " Take care ; don't 
 
 slip; 
 Take time," and oft he strains the slackened 
 
 rope ; 
 But if some bungler trips, with anguish shrieks, 
 " For Heaven's sake, care ! Hold fast, be sure ! " 
 While louder screeds the gale, and fans the 
 
 Arete 
 With measureless wide wing unceasingly, 
 Like the mysterious roc of wonder tale : 
 Still on they grope fog -smothered, yet un- 
 harmed, 
 
126 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 Till youth's light heart quick rallied into play, 
 Finds all half-jest, and laughs within the storm ; 
 When one raw tyro numbed by windy cold 
 Turning an ugly corner backward slips, 
 And stumbles toward a fatal plunge cloud- 
 swathed, 
 Upon the Lyskamm side of naked precipice, 
 Where any fall, like winged Mercury, 
 Leads swift to Pluto and the sunless fields. 
 But quick as viewless word, which that wild 
 
 drudge 
 The lightning runs with, leaps the undaunted 
 
 guide, 
 His life flung on the hazard instantly, 
 To clutch the luckless stumbler as he reels ; 
 And bending all his lustihood to task, 
 With one great lurch of his resistless arm 
 Swings him across the knife-edge like a babe; 
 And since no time to get his footing there 
 Is left, he rather leaps than falls 
 
THE DESCENT. 127 
 
 Down the sharp rival slope, less precipice 
 Though scarcely less, upon the northern face 
 Where seamless ice and glassy smooth runs down 
 To deadly steeps an instant's dash below. 
 There flash they down a double meteor, 
 Scarce seen, when gone, towards that awful 
 
 brink, 
 Where waits the primal Nihilist, calm death. 
 But now the cool-brained Swiss, shrewd moun- 
 taineer, 
 Knit to his man as grasping hawk to fowl, 
 Bites deep his axe-point in the frozen slide, 
 Till hangs the trusty steel in its own groove 
 And checks their flight in mid destruction 
 
 stayed, 
 One bold moment's work, no more ! but moment 
 Laced with all the threads of spinning Fates. 
 
 So holding on with enforced stubbornness, 
 The party finds its way whole and unmarred, 
 
128 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 To the large bosses now fresh-clad in snow, 
 Whence the Arete springs forth its dizzy spire ; 
 Here easy foothold offers rapid course, 
 Yet mockingly, for where at morn the snow 
 Night-crusted gave a marble floor as laid 
 For conquering caliphs, now the soft flakes lie 
 In fluffy lightness, hindering every stride 
 As feathery scruples clog ambition's way. 
 But since the worst seems past, and danger less, 
 The weary men go carelessly, nor heed 
 Repeated admonitions of the guides, *> 
 But straggle wide and try to shorten space, 
 Thinking the tedious miles remaining still 
 But frigid drudgery unspiced with danger's zest ; 
 And trudging on unroped they find the storm 
 A blithe adventure rich in novelty. 
 But prowling peril with a stealthy tread 
 Haunts every Alpine path, and suddenly 
 One comrade makes a short glissade, where 
 shows 
 
THE DESCENT. 129 
 
 No harm, and like a wanton boy skims down 
 A slope, but losing foothold as he slides, 
 Turns from his course, and o'er an unseen brink 
 Rolls headlong, disappearing like a ghost 
 That noiseless flits along, without a word. 
 Engulfed and swallowed clean within the jaws 
 Of a wide-spread crevasse, whose steely lips, 
 Fringed like a shark's with gleaming fangs of 
 
 fear, 
 Grin horrible, the glacier's ghastly smile, 
 Portal and pit of an unshoveled grave. 
 
 Now what a thrilling outcry rends the air ! 
 What pallid terror sits on every cheek ! 
 What dark foreboding clouds each knitted brow ! 
 And chief the faithful guides, who fullest know 
 How deep the peril, stand amazed with fear. 
 All huddle round the fatal brink, and bend 
 <Into the twilight chasm, and call down 
 And listen fearfully, to hear at last 
 
 9 
 
130 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 One muffled groan steal up the rayless pit, 
 Then utter stillness, as the dead are still. 
 Now aching fear lends bungling hands and slow 
 To frantic zeal ; while tremblingly they join 
 The ropes in one, and knot it fast about 
 An eager guide, — too eager in his fear, — 
 Who quickly then is lowered between the walls 
 And icy jaws of that unfathomed crevasse. 
 Down, far down into the chilly darkness 
 He descends, peering this way and that 
 In search of their lost comrade, finding naught, 
 And groping still, when with a hasty run 
 The ill-tied knot, weak in its fastening, slips, 
 And parting midway drops the pendant Swiss 
 Within the death-trap. Whither ? Ah, whither ? 
 Who knows whither ? They only know that 
 
 two 
 Are gone, and one perhaps is killed ; and both 
 Imperiled utterly need swift release, 
 And half the priceless rope is in the chasm. 
 
THE DESCENT. 131 
 
 Those on the brink, with slackened cord in hand, 
 A moment sit as dazed, stunned^ paralyzed, 
 Feeling a horror of great darkness fall, 
 As on the sleeping song-birds falls the owl 
 Devouring happy broods, melodious of joy. 
 And that black tragedy, life sometimes is, 
 Comes bearing down upon them, flying at peak 
 The death - head's flag, with fierce disasters 
 
 manned. 
 In such an hour the heart grows old as time, 
 And dreamily seems one with sufferers 
 Of every age and clime ; with martyrs, slaves, 
 With hopeless prisoners, men wrecked at sea, 
 On prairies lost, or bayed by ravening wolves, 
 Or anyhow set on by fierce Calamity 
 With his blood-thirsty hounds ; one bends be- 
 neath 
 The undivided woes accumulate 
 Of all his troubled race since time bore man, 
 In his own form and single misery. 
 
132 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 Time seems a dream of dreams, and man Time's 
 
 fool, — 
 The flying football of its angry hours. 
 
 But moments now are precious, here 's no hour 
 To indulge in wasteful grief. The men below 
 Craye speediest rescue ; minutes are as gold. 
 Swiftly new ropes are spliced, and coats are lent 
 To give more length ; and soon a second Swiss 
 Is on his downward way unterrified 
 By all foregone mishap, who finding late 
 His comrade-guide unhurt, calls loudly up 
 The joyful news ; the narrowing chasm had 
 
 caught 
 His falling body in its wedgy jaws, 
 A trifling pace below, whence his good axe, 
 Plied skillfully, might work him full release ; 
 A little toil untrammels him entire, 
 And quick the ropes re-joining both resume 
 Their cheerless search, and grope about the 
 
 cavern, 
 
THE DESCENT, 133 
 
 Crowding their way along the closing walls, 
 Two ghastly precipices of dripping ice, 
 Till finally they light upon their man 
 Lying motionless, insensible, lodged fast 
 Upon a ragged ice-shelf boldly pushed 
 Against the opposing wall, where drawing in 
 The trenched crevasse constricts its gulfy throat 
 To half its former breadth. There, still as dead, 
 One arm hung listlessly from off the shelf, 
 His dank hair dripping with the ice-dew, stark, 
 His garments torn, and frozen to the ledge, 
 Their comrade lies in such an evil plight 
 As stuns his finders, finding him so low, 
 And scarce of his salvation seems a hope. 
 Here is small space to put forth half their 
 
 force, 
 So strait the cave, so close its mighty jaws, 
 That like a coffin hug their victim in, 
 And gives scant room to swing the trenchant 
 
 axe 
 
134 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 And cut their fellow loose ; but manfully, 
 Like faithful Switzers, losing no dear time, 
 They ply their utmost skill, their utmost 
 
 strength, 
 And work as those who hold another's life 
 In fee; since still they feel a heart-beat faint, 
 A flutter of spent life, thanks to the slope 
 Of ice-wall, where, though steep, the hapless man 
 Had rather slid than dropped to his cold perch. 
 
 Above, the rest sit gloomy on that evil brink, 
 Holding the loosened rope, and full of boding 
 
 fears, 
 Their friend, themselves, in such a desperate 
 
 plight, 
 And life seems scarce a boon in such black hour. 
 And anxiously they wait a sign to pull 
 Aloft, while flit the dreary moments on, 
 To find them waiting still in hope deferred. 
 At last the signal comes, and drawing slow, 
 
 
THE DESCENT. 135 
 
 They raise — a guide exhausted, strained, dis- 
 mayed, 
 And pale with strenuous effort still in vain, 
 For still their friend is fast ensepulchred. 
 How chill fares sinking hope in each warm 
 
 heart ! 
 And haggard grows the waning day, the while 
 Deaf Nature unrelenting makes no sign, 
 But storms along as recklessly as were 
 Our men but stones, and their sweet lives no 
 
 more 
 Than frosted leaves; the riotous elements 
 Prolong their revels ; thunder, lightning, sleet, 
 In wild Walpurgis' dance their demon-parts 
 Sustain unweariedly ; how far from men ! 
 How far from shelter, food, or friendliest fire ! 
 Nor any trodden way of helpful folk 
 Is here ; nor saving hands of help and care ; 
 Protection none, nor mercy ; and all vain 
 The cry for respite ; law-obeying heavens 
 
136 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 And ordered winds must keep their courses sure, 
 Though half the sphere fell to their sightless 
 
 rage. 
 In vain ! men's late repentance, that as fools 
 They left the peaceful fields, where all the land 
 Lay safe before their feet, to tempt this rock, 
 And try conclusions in this wilderness, 
 Against the mateless forces of roused Earth. 
 In vain the stifled outcry of their hearts, 
 " Spare, Nature, spare ! dear Mother, spare ! 
 
 Call off 
 These airy murderers whose lightest sport 
 It is to slay us, Nature ! even in our prime." 
 But cold and storm hear nothing ! Human 
 
 hands 
 Must save, or death will sing his paean on the 
 
 slain. 
 Another Swiss descends in that long grave, 
 And working like a madman recklessly 
 Cleaves the last obstacle, then twines the rope 
 
THE DESCENT. 137 
 
 About the unconscious body, giving sign 
 
 To raise all gently. So again above 
 
 They draw their speechless comrade in sad case 
 
 A woful mockery of that blithe mate 
 
 Who passed this way at morn so buoyant, bold, 
 
 Now by such savage handling left in pause 
 
 Upon the dreadful threshold, which once crossed, 
 
 Recrossed is nevermore ; — him they salute 
 
 As those about to die salute the dead. 
 
 What boots it now that heedless Nature shows 
 Her utmost grandeurs with an artist's skill, 
 If tented on the radiant highlands Death 
 Keeps his black camp, himself a robber knight, 
 That with his cruel troopers scours the land ; 
 Nor gives to harmless travelers any peace 
 By day or night, though traveling carefully. 
 But one he flings at from the shelving crags, 
 Another clutches through a swathing fog, 
 Or skulking in the glacier plucks a third 
 
138 
 
 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 To dripping dungeons foul with dead men's 
 
 bones ; 
 Or with swift, snowy minions whirling down 
 Bears off whole comradeships of lusty men 
 
 To cells of silence whence no ransom buvs. 
 
 */ 
 
 Yet oft the bandit fails, outwitted oft 
 By wilier human cunning, or o'erborne 
 By bolder deed; so here he springs his trap 
 And takes no prey, for that a spark of life 
 Remains unquenched, a feeble pulse, a trace 
 Of breathing, small enough, but still enough 
 To keep life's sluggish current to its flow. 
 For now all hastily untiring hands 
 Afford life's ministries, and kindly rough 
 Recall faint tint of blood to those pleached lips, 
 Bring back the fuller pulse, the stronger breath, 
 Till saved their friend sits up, he speaks, he 
 
 lives, 
 And that fell danger baffled slinks away. 
 
THE DESCENT. 139 
 
 But deadly perils still a howling pack 
 Bark close around their heels, as once again 
 They strike the downward way ; the drifted 
 
 snow, 
 The hidden track, the muffling fog, the cold, 
 And landmarks all invisible ; besides 
 Their saved companion's strength but half re- 
 gained 
 Asks careful journeying that hinders speed. 
 They crawl where scarce the carrier-pigeon's 
 
 wing 
 Could over-haste their course ; and surly Day 
 Strides onward toward his western caves; all 
 
 things 
 They need ; assistance, strength, good cheer, new 
 
 life. 
 Will not some helper come ? Will never snows 
 Have end ? Will never storm draw off, and 
 
 clouds 
 Melt into native nothingness? Is there 
 
140 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 No mercy stealing out of heaven to bring 
 Them rescue ? Now that earthly help but fails, 
 And wearied guides trudge on so heavily! 
 Forgotten are all words of merriment 
 As they press on, — unhappy, listless, slow, 
 Fearful of some yet darker fate to fall. 
 
 But storms hold not forever ; and at last 
 
 This tempest falters, parts its thinning mists, 
 
 Calls in its winds, binds back the pelting sleet, 
 
 Rolls off the gathered cohorts of thick cloud 
 
 That linger low and long in leaden folds 
 
 Upon gray Rosa's summits ; reappears 
 
 The courtly company of kingly hills, 
 
 So grand, so pure, so robed in innocence, 
 
 So like a royal murderer's lily hands 
 
 When in sweet morning dew washed stainless 
 
 clean 
 After night's tragedy is done and hid. 
 And now returns the wonder-working Sun, 
 
THE DESCENT. 141 
 
 Divine life-giver marvelous, and pours 
 
 His slanting gold athwart the wintry wolds, 
 
 And o'er the distant hill-sides soft and brown, 
 
 Where lie kind homes, and happy men go on 
 
 To peaceful evening tasks with painless thoughts ; 
 
 And on the Gorner glacier, far below, 
 
 Are moving forms, small as the valiant wren, 
 
 But moving hitherward, some kindlier souls 
 
 Come out to bring the hard-pressed wanderers 
 
 Their sorely-needed succor ere they die. 
 
 Now leap all hearts, as if Apollo came 
 
 And breathed his godhood's force upon their 
 
 limbs, 
 And wrought an ancient miracle within ; 
 That strong and light of foot they push their 
 
 steps 
 Down the huge mountain bosses, all alive ; 
 And even their much-hurt comrade, limping on, 
 Seems filled with wondrous vigor, and restored, 
 Like half-dead Grecian heroes whom the god 
 
142 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 Snatched from the press of battle and made 
 
 whole ; 
 Now many a safe glissade at coasting speed 
 Makes fleet their progress down the hardening 
 
 slopes, 
 And gravitation, like a guardian nurse 
 Holding small hands, lets down their lengthened 
 
 steps, 
 While blazes glorious sunset overhead, 
 Smiting the mountains into waves of fire. 
 
 So ever flitting, the soft-footed Hours 
 Bring home the doughty mountaineers unslain, 
 Beneath the deepening twilight, weary, slow, 
 But, since they foiled great peril, bold of mien ; 
 Though gratefully as ne'er believed they stride 
 The foot- worn threshold of the low-browed inn 
 Upon high Riffel's forehead, whence at dawn 
 They sped away so flush and stout of heart, 
 As seems some dreamy untold ages since, 
 
THE DESCENT. 143 
 
 So deep a gulf has rare experience 
 Thrust 'twixt linked morn and eve. Then rest- 
 ing here 
 Within the cozy guest-room they recount 
 Their dread adventure to deep-listening ears, 
 Still heightening every danger now surpassed, 
 And fain to tell the grandeurs of the way. 
 But these will not rehearse themselves in words ; 
 The visual dream transcending frail report 
 Remains a treasure-trove, a fairy gold 
 Hid in the loneliest caverns of shy thought, 
 Not hoarded yet unshared; for none but he 
 Whose startled eyes have seen can guess the 
 
 sight 
 That rises like a mirage, heavenly clear, 
 Upon the inner vision, undefiled, 
 Of phantom peaks dim with the silver light, 
 Of blinding snow-fields roofed with sapphire 
 
 skies, 
 Of emerald pastures pierced by glaciers cold, 
 
144 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 Of wrinkled crags sad with corroding years, 
 With streams of misty amethyst between, 
 Crowding the dream-horizon with such pomp 
 And wondrous pageantry as dwarfs the real 
 And living world to thinnest fantasy, 
 In face of those more regal realms. Alas ! 
 For with all comes deep wistfulness and pain 
 That such unwasted grandeurs still should stand 
 To bless beholders with unrivaled joy, 
 And we not there to see them all our days. 
 
V. 
 
 PULVIS ET UMBRA. 
 
 So Monte Rosa stands, and so has stood 
 More years than there are needles on the pine ; 
 And so may further stand unspent more years 
 Than there are crystals in her banks of snow ; 
 But still the wolfish hours shall gnaw her crags, 
 The tireless elements that carved her symmetry 
 Tear at her spires, nor heed that driving rain, 
 Sleet, cold, sand-bearing wind, and sunshine's 
 
 kiss, 
 Or lightning's blow but spoil what once they 
 
 sped. 
 
 The riving rock continually wastes, 
 
 The mount shall sink to hill, the hill to mound, 
 
 The oak shall grow where once the glacier 
 
 groaned, 
 10 
 
146 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 And where snow sparkled shall the snow-drop 
 
 star, 
 Chamois shall yield to sheep, and all to time; 
 The tribes of beast and men lie down to sleep, 
 A general sleep unquestioning, and earth 
 As lifeless nod about the cooling sun 
 As does the half -seen moon round parent earth ; 
 For all things haste to changing not to end : 
 One cycle dawns, but treading on its heel 
 A stronger cycle thrusts it quickly forth, 
 To be in turn left dying by a third ; 
 Or rather is no cycle but one time, 
 Whose unit is eternity, of which 
 The minutes grow to hours, the hours to days, 
 And these to months, which swell to rapid years, 
 Or loitering centuries that run their tale, 
 And tortoise race to such high numerals 
 As e'en to think of drugs man's memory, 
 Like poppy or mandragora ; a mote 
 He seems in such deep reckonings, a breath, 
 
PULVIS ET UMBRA, 147 
 
 A microscopic atom, scarcely more 
 Than that discerned bacterium that rolls 
 And finds an ocean in the film of dew 
 Contained between the close-pressed lenses, held 
 Beneath the powerful lens of some shrewd man 
 Of science, searching long to find the start 
 And genesis of being in the least. 
 So goeth all things, nothing finds its end 
 Save in a new beginning which grows old, 
 And endlessly transforms itself to new. 
 And this our mountain, in whose shadow we 
 Have found our pleasure, yields her majesty 
 To that great sweep of universal law 
 By which she grew, which brings her to her 
 
 death. 
 And who shall say what lies beyond save this : 
 That some good future issuing from the mists, 
 And no less gracious, though to us unknown, 
 May follow with new wonders, splendor, strength, 
 Such that we well might grieve most bitterly 
 
148 MONTE ROSA. 
 
 Should we not be to see it in its prime ; 
 But there we cannot follow, even on fancy's 
 
 wing, 
 For now we stand upon the outmost rim 
 Of matter vague, eternal, infinite, 
 And have no chart across its trackless lea. 
 
 
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