BEFORE SUNRISE IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI
Hast thou a charm to stay the morning-star In his steep course? So long he seems to pause On thy bald awful head, O sovran Blanc ! The Arve and Arveiron at thy base Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful Form! Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines, How silently! Around thee and above Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black, An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it, As with a wedge! But when I look again, It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine, Thy habitation from eternity!
O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee, Till thou, still present to the bodily sense, Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer 15
I worshipp'd the Invisible alone.
Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody, So sweet, we know not we are listening to it, Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought,
Yea, with my life and life's own secret joy: 20 Till the dilating Soul, enrapt, transfused, Into the mighty vision passing — there, As in her natural form, swell'd vast to Heaven! Awake, my soul! not only passive praise Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears, 25 Mute thanks and secret ecstasy! Awake, Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake! Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my Hymn.
Thou first and chief, sole sovran of the Vale! O struggling with the darkness all the night, 30 And visited all night by troops of stars,
Or when they climb the sky or when they sink:
Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow Adown enormous ravines slope amain Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice, And stopp'd at once amid their maddest plunge! Motionless torrents! silent cataracts! Who made you glorious as the gates of Heaven Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers 56
Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet? God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations, Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God! God! sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice!
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like
And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow, And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!
Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost! Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest! 65 Ye eagles, play-mates of the mountain-storm! Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds! Ye signs and wonders of the element !
Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise! Thou too, hoar Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks,
Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard, Shoots downward, glittering through the pure
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, A mighty fountain momently was forced: Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail: And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever It flung up momently the sacred river. Five miles meandering with a mazy motion Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, Then reach'd the caverns measureless to man, And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean: And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war!
It was a miracle of rare device,
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