Chapter M: Arnold

HYMN 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! 5 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, 10 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 worshipped 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, swelled 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 sovereign 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: Companion of the morning-star at dawn, Thyself Earth's rosy star, and of the dawn Co-herald: wake, O wake, and utter praise! 35 Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in Earth? Who filled thy countenance with rosy light? Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?

And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad! Who called you forth from night and utter death, 40 From dark and icy caverns called you forth, Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks, For ever shattered and the same for ever? Who gave you your invulnerable life, Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy, 45 Unceasing thunder and eternal foam? And who commanded (and the silence came), Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest?

Ye Ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow Adown enormous ravines slope amain-- 50 Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice, And stopped 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 55 Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers 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! 60 Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds! 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, 70 Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard, Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene Into the depth of clouds, that veil thy breast-- Thou too again, stupendous Mountain! thou That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low 75 In adoration, upward from thy base Slow travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears, Solemnly seemest, like a vapoury cloud, To rise before me--Rise, O ever rise, Rise like a cloud of incense from the Earth! 80 Thou kingly Spirit throned among the hills, Thou dread ambassador from Earth to Heaven, Great Hierarch! tell thou the silent sky, And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun Earth, with her thousand voices, praises GOD. 85

S. T. COLERIDGE.

HOME, ROSE, AND HOME, PROVENCE AND LA PALIE

ITE DOMUM SATURAE, VENIT HESPERUS

The skies have sunk, and hid the upper snow, (Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie,) The rainy clouds are filing fast below, And wet will be the path, and wet shall we. Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie. 5

Ah dear, and where is he, a year agone Who stepped beside and cheered us on and on? My sweetheart wanders far away from me, In foreign land or on a foreign sea. Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie. 10

The lightning zigzags shoot across the sky, (Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie,) And through the vale the rains go sweeping by; Ah me, and when in shelter shall we be? Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie. 15

Cold, dreary cold, the stormy winds feel they O'er foreign lands and foreign seas that stray. (Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.) And doth he e'er, I wonder, bring to mind The pleasant huts and herds he left behind? 20 And doth he sometimes in his slumbering see The feeding kine and doth he think of me, My sweetheart wandering wheresoe'er it be? Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.

The thunder bellows far from snow to snow, 25 (Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie,) And loud and louder roars the flood below. Heigh-ho! but soon in shelter shall we be: Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.

Or shall he find before his term be sped, 30 Some comelier maid that he shall wish to wed? (Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.) For weary is work, and weary day by day To have your comfort miles on miles away. Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie. 35

Or may it be that I shall find my mate, And he returning see himself too late? For work we must, and what we see, we see. And God he knows, and what must be, must be, When sweethearts wander far away from me. 40 Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.

The sky behind is brightening up anew, (Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie,) The rain is ending, and our journey too; Heigh-ho! aha! for here at home are we:-- 45 In, Rose, and in, Provence and La Palie.

A. H. CLOUGH.

THERE LIES A VALE IN IDA

There lies a vale in Ida, lovelier Than all the valleys of Ionian hills. The swimming vapour slopes athwart the glen, Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine, And loiters, slowly drawn. On either hand 5 The lawns and meadow-ledges midway down Hang rich in flowers, and far below them roars The long brook falling through the clov'n ravine In cataract after cataract to the sea. Behind the valley topmost Gargarus 10 Stands up and takes the morning: but in front The gorges, opening wide apart, reveal Troas and Ilion's columned citadel, The crown of Troas. Hither came at noon Mournful Oenone, wandering forlorn 15 Of Paris, once her playmate on the hills. Her cheek had lost the rose, and round her neck Floated her hair or seemed to float in rest. She, leaning on a fragment twined with vine, Sang to the stillness, till the mountain-shade 20 Sloped downward to her seat from the upper cliff. 'O mother Ida, many-fountained Ida, Dear mother Ida, hearken ere I die. For now the noonday quiet holds the hill: The grasshopper is silent in the grass: 25 The lizard, with his shadow on the stone, Rests like a shadow, and the cicala sleeps. The purple flowers droop: the golden bee Is lily-cradled: I alone awake. My eyes are full of tears, my heart of love, 30 My heart is breaking, and my eyes are dim, And I am all aweary of my life.'

LORD TENNYSON.

COME DOWN, O MAID

Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height: What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang), In height and cold, the splendour of the hills? But cease to move so near the heavens, and cease To glide a sunbeam by the blasted pine, 5 To sit a star upon the sparkling spire; And come, for Love is of the valley, come, For Love is of the valley, come thou down And find him; by the happy threshold, he, Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize, 10 Or red with spirted purple of the vats, Or foxlike in the vine; nor cares to walk With Death and Morning on the silver horns, Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine, Nor find him dropped upon the firths of ice, 15 That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls To roll the torrent out of dusky doors: But follow: let the torrent dance thee down To find him in the valley; let the wild Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave 20 The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke, That like a broken purpose waste in air: So waste not thou; but come; for all the vales Await thee; azure pillars of the hearth 25 Arise to thee; the children call, and I Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound, Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet; Myriads of rivulets hurrying through the lawn, The moan of doves in immemorial elms, 30 And murmuring of innumerable bees.

LORD TENNYSON.

IN THE VALLEY OF CAUTERETZ

All along the valley, stream that flashest white, Deepening thy voice with the deepening of the night, All along the valley, where thy waters flow, I walked with one I loved two and thirty years ago. All along the valley while I walked to-day, 5 The two and thirty years were a mist that rolls away; For all along the valley, down thy rocky bed, Thy living voice to me was as the voice of the dead, And all along the valley, by rock and cave and tree, The voice of the dead was a living voice to me. 10

LORD TENNYSON.

CURRENTE CALAMO

Quick, painter, quick, the moment seize Amid the snowy Pyrenees; More evanescent than the snow, The pictures come, are seen, and go: Quick, quick, _currente calamo_. 5 I do not ask the tints that fill The gate of day 'twixt hill and hill; I ask not for the hues that fleet Above the distant peaks; my feet Are on a poplar-bordered road, 10 Where with a saddle and a load A donkey, old and ashen-grey, Reluctant works his dusty way. Before him, still with might and main Pulling his rope, the rustic rein, 15 A girl: before both him and me, Frequent she turns and lets me see, Unconscious, lets me scan and trace The sunny darkness of her face And outlines full of southern grace. 20 Following I notice, yet and yet, Her olive skin, dark eyes deep set, And black, and blacker e'en than jet, The escaping hair that scantly showed, Since o'er it in the country mode, 25 For winter warmth and summer shade, The lap of scarlet cloth is laid. And then, back-falling from the head, A crimson kerchief overspread Her jacket blue; thence passing down, 30 A skirt of darkest yellow-brown, Coarse stuff, allowing to the view The smooth limb to the woollen shoe. But who--here's some one following too,-- A priest, and reading at his book! 35 Read on, O priest, and do not look; Consider,--she is but a child,-- Yet might your fancy be beguiled. Read on, O priest, and pass and go! But see, succeeding in a row, 40 Two, three, and four, a motley train, Musicians wandering back to Spain; With fiddle and with tambourine, A man with women following seen. What dresses, ribbon ends, and flowers! 45 And,--sight to wonder at for hours,-- The man,--to Phillip has he sat?-- With butterfly-like velvet hat; One dame his big bassoon conveys, On one his gentle arm he lays; 50 They stop, and look, and something say, And to 'Espana' ask the way. But while I speak, and point them on; Alas, my dearer friends are gone, The dark-eyed maiden and the ass 55 Have had the time the bridge to pass. Vainly, beyond it far descried, Adieu, and peace with you abide, Grey donkey, and your beauteous guide. The pictures come, the pictures go, 60 Quick, quick, _currente calamo_.

A. H. CLOUGH.

CINTRA

Lo! Cintra's glorious Eden intervenes
In variegated maze of mount and glen.
Ah me! what hand can pencil guide, or pen,
To follow half on which the eye dilates
Through views more dazzling unto mortal ken 5
Than those whereof such things the bard relates,
Who to the awe-struck world unlocked Elysium's gates?

The horrid crags, by toppling convent crown'd,
The cork-trees hoar that clothe the shaggy steep,
The mountain-moss by scorching skies imbrown'd, 10
The sunken glen, whose sunless shrubs must weep,
The tender azure of the unruffled deep,
The orange tints that gild the greenest bough,
The torrents that from cliff to valley leap,
The vine on high, the willow branch below, 15
Mix'd in one mighty scene, with varied beauty glow.

LORD BYRON.

SWITZERLAND

In the steamy, stuffy Midlands, 'neath an English summer sky, When the holidays are nearing with the closing of July, And experienced Alpine stagers and impetuous recruits Are renewing with the season their continual disputes-- Those inveterate disputes 5 On the newest Alpine routes-- And inspecting the condition of their mountaineering boots:

You may stifle your reflections, you may banish them afar, You may try to draw a solace from the thought of 'Naechstes Jahr'-- But your heart is with those climbers, and you'll feverishly yearn 10 To be crossing of the Channel with your luggage labelled 'Bern', Leaving England far astern With a ticket through to Bern, And regarding your profession with a lordly unconcern!

_They_ will lie beside the torrent, just as you were wont to do, 15 With the woodland green around them and a snow-field shining through: They will tread the higher pastures, where celestial breezes blow, While the valley lies in shadow and the peaks are all aglow-- Where the airs of heaven blow 'Twixt the pine woods and the snow, 20 And the shades of evening deepen in the valley far below:

They will scale the mountain strongholds that in days of old you won, They will plod behind a lantern ere the rising of the sun, On a 'grat' or in a chimney, on the steep and dizzy slope, For a foothold or a handhold they will diligently grope-- On the rocky, icy slope 26 (Where we'll charitably hope 'Tis assistance only Moral that they're getting from a rope);

They will dine on mule and marmot, and on mutton made of goats, They will face the various horrors of Helvetian table d'hotes: 30 But whate'er the paths that lead them, and the food whereon they fare, They will taste the joy of living, as you only taste it there, As you taste it Only There In the higher, purer air, Unapproachable by worries and oblivious quite of care! 35

Place me somewhere in the Valais, 'mid the mountains west of Binn, West of Binn and east of Savoy, in a decent kind of inn, With a peak or two for climbing, and a glacier to explore,-- Any mountains will content me, though they've all been climbed before-- Yes! I care not any more 40 Though they've all been done before, And the names they keep in bottles may be numbered by the score!

Though the hand of Time be heavy: though your ancient comrades fail: Though the mountains you ascended be accessible by rail: 44 Though your nerve begin to weaken, and you're gouty grown and fat, And prefer to walk in places which are reasonably flat-- Though you grow so very fat That you climb the Gorner Grat Or perhaps the Little Scheideck,--and are rather proud of that: Yet I hope that till you die 50 You will annually sigh For a vision of the Valais with the coming of July, For the Oberland or Valais and the higher, purer air, And the true delight of living, as you taste it only there!

A. D. GODLEY.

ZERMATT CHURCHYARD

_'C'etait une guerre avec le Matterhorn,' said a Zermatt peasant
of the many attempts to scale this great mountain_

They warred with Nature, as of old with gods The Titans; like the Titans too they fell, Hurled from the summit of their hopes, and dashed Sheer down precipitous tremendous crags, A thousand deaths in one. 'Tis o'er, and we 5 Who sit at home, and by the peaceful hearth Read their sad tale, made wise by the event, May moralize of folly and a thirst For barren honour, fruitful of no end. 'Tis well: we were not what we are without 10 That cautious wisdom, and the sober mind Of prudence, steering calm 'twixt rock and storm. Yet, too, methinks, we were not what we are Without that other fiery element-- The love, the thirst for venture, and the scorn 15 That aught should be too great for mortal powers That yet one peak in all the skyey throng Should rise unchallenged with unvanquished snows, Virgin from the beginning of the world. Such fire was theirs; O not for fame alone-- 20 That coarser thread in all the finer skein That draws adventure, oft by vulgar minds Deemed man's sole aim--but for the high delight To tread untrodden solitudes, and feel A sense of power, of fullest freedom, lost 25 In the loud vale where _Man_ is all in all. For this they dared too much; nor they alone, They but the foremost of an Alpine band, Who in the life of cities pine and pant For purer air, for peak, and pass, and glen, 30 With slow majestic glacier, born to-day, Yet with the trophies of a thousand years On its scarred bosom, till its icy bonds It burst, and rush a torrent to the main. Such sons still hast thou, England; be thou proud To have them, relics of thy younger age. 36 Nor murmur if not all at once they take The care and burden on them. Learn of them! Youth has its teaching, too, as well as age: We grow too old too soon; the flaxen head 40 Of childhood apes experience' hoary crown, And prudent lisps ungraceful aged saws. 'Tis so: yet here in Zermatt--here beneath The fatal peak, beside the heaving mound That bears the black cross with the golden names 45 Of men, our friends, upon it--here we fain Would preach a soberer lesson. Forth they went, Fearless and gay as to a festival, One clear, cold morn: they climbed the virgin height; They stood where still the awestruck gazer's eye 50 Shudders to follow. There a little while They spake of home, that centre whose wide arms Hold us where'er we are, in joy, or woe, On earth, in air, and far on stormy seas. Then they turned homeward, yet not to return. 55 It was a fearful place, and as they crept Fearfully down the giddy steep, there came A slip--no more--one little slip, and down Linked in a living avalanche they fell, Brothers in hope, in triumph, and in death, 60 Nor dying were divided. One remained To tell their story, and to bury them.

A. G. BUTLER.

ZERMATT

TO THE MATTERHORN

(_June-July, 1897_)

Thirty-two years since, up against the sun, Seven shapes, thin atomies to lower sight, Labouringly leapt and gained thy gabled height, And four lives paid for what the seven had won.

They were the first by whom the deed was done, 5 And when I look at thee, my mind takes flight To that day's tragic feat of manly might, As though, till then, of history thou hadst none.

Yet ages ere men topped thee, late and soon Thou didst behold the planets lift and lower; 10 Saw'st, maybe, Joshua's pausing sun and moon, And the betokening sky when Caesar's power Approached its bloody end; yea, even that Noon When darkness filled the earth till the ninth hour.

T. HARDY.

NATURA MALIGNA

The Lady of the Hills with crimes untold Followed my feet, with azure eyes of prey; By glacier-brink she stood--by cataract-spray-- When mists were dire, or avalanche-echoes rolled. At night she glimmered in the death-wind cold, 5 And if a footprint shone at break of day, My flesh would quail, but straight my soul would say: ''Tis hers whose hand God's mightier hand doth hold.'

I trod her snow-bridge, for the moon was bright, Her icicle-arch across the sheer crevasse, 10 When lo, she stood!... God made her let me pass, Then felled the bridge!... Oh, there in sallow light There down the chasm, I saw her cruel, white, And all my wondrous days as in a glass.

T. WATTS-DUNTON.

NATURA BENIGNA

What power is this? what witchery wins my feet To peaks so sheer they scorn the cloaking snow, All silent as the emerald gulfs below, Down whose ice-walls the wings of twilight beat? What thrill of earth and heaven--most wild, most sweet-- 5 What answering pulse that all the senses know, Comes leaping from the ruddy eastern glow Where, far away, the skies and mountains meet?

Mother, 'tis I reborn: I know thee well: That throb I know and all it prophesies, 10 O Mother and Queen, beneath the olden spell Of silence, gazing from thy hills and skies! Dumb Mother, struggling with the years to tell The secret at thy heart through helpless eyes!

T. WATTS-DUNTON.

THE SIMPLON PASS

----Brook and road Were fellow-travellers in this gloomy Pass, And with them did we journey several hours At a slow step. The immeasurable height Of woods decaying, never to be decayed, 5 The stationary blasts of waterfalls, And in the narrow rent, at every turn, Winds thwarting winds bewildered and forlorn, The torrents shooting from the clear blue sky, The rocks that muttered close upon our ears, 10 Black drizzling crags that spake by the wayside As if a voice were in them, the sick sight And giddy prospect of the raving stream, The unfettered clouds and region of the heavens, Tumult and peace, the darkness and the light-- 15 Were all like workings of one mind, the features Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree, Characters of the great Apocalypse, The types and symbols of Eternity, Of first, and last, and midst, and without end. 20

W. WORDSWORTH.

OBERMANN

I

In front the awful Alpine track Crawls up its rocky stair; The autumn storm-winds drive the rack Close o'er it, in the air.

Behind are the abandoned baths 5 Mute in their meadows lone; The leaves are on the valley paths; The mists are on the Rhone--

The white mists rolling like a sea. I hear the torrents roar. 10 --Yes, Obermann, all speaks of thee! I feel thee near once more.

How often, where the slopes are green On Jaman, hast thou sate By some high chalet door, and seen 15 The summer day grow late,

And darkness steal o'er the wet grass With the pale crocus starred, And reach that glimmering sheet of glass Beneath the piny sward, 20

Lake Leman's waters, far below: And watched the rosy light Fade from the distant peaks of snow: And on the air of night

Heard accents of the eternal tongue 25 Through the pine branches play: Listened, and felt thyself grow young: Listened, and wept----Away!

Away the dreams that but deceive! And thou, sad Guide, adieu! 30 I go; Fate drives me: but I leave Half of my life with you.

II

Glion?----Ah, twenty years, it cuts All meaning from a name! White houses prank where once were huts! Glion, but not the same,

And yet I know not. All unchanged 5 The turf, the pines, the sky! The hills in their old order ranged. The lake, with Chillon by!

And 'neath those chestnut-trees, where stiff And stony mounts the way, 10 Their crackling husk-heaps burn, as if I left them yesterday.

Across the valley, on that slope, The huts of Avant shine-- Its pines under their branches ope 15 Ways for the tinkling kine.

Full-foaming milk-pails, Alpine fare, Sweet heaps of fresh-cut grass, Invite to rest the traveller there Before he climb the pass-- 20

The gentian-flowered pass, its crown With yellow spires aflame, Whence drops the path to Alliere down And walls where Byron came.

Still in my soul the voice I heard 25 Of Obermann--away I turned; by some vague impulse stirred, Along the rocks of Naye

And Sonchaud's piny flanks I gaze And the blanched summit bare 30 Of Malatrait, to where in haze The Valais opens fair,

And the domed Velan with his snows Behind the upcrowding hills Doth all the heavenly opening close 35 Which the Rhone's murmur fills--

And glorious there, without a sound, Across the glimmering lake, High in the Valais depth profound, I saw the morning break. 40

M. ARNOLD.

THE TERRACE AT BERNE

Ten years!--and to my waking eye Once more the roofs of Berne appear; The rocky banks, the terrace high, The stream--and do I linger here?

The clouds are on the Oberland, 5 The Jungfrau snows look faint and far; But bright are those green fields at hand, And through those fields comes down the Aar,

And from the blue twin lakes it comes, Flows by the town, the church-yard fair, 10 And 'neath the garden-walk it hums, The house--and is my Marguerite there?