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Home  »  Poems of Places An Anthology in 31 Volumes  »  A Memory of Interlachen

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Switzerland and Austria: Vol. XVI. 1876–79.

Switzerland: Interlachen

A Memory of Interlachen

By Annie Adams Fields (1834–1915)

THERE is a light in darkness which the soul

Can seldom know, until the sense have crept

From height to height across the shadowless peaks

Which sentinel thy valley; there are deeps

In thy green hollows, where still thought could lie

Through summer noons unending, glad with dreams;

There too are twilights, sudden-black with storm,

When thunder speaks from the unapproachable hills,

And earth shakes at the arrows of his light.

Then have I heard a cithern’s tinkling sound,

And hollow bursts of laughter from the hall,

While awful thunder shook the world again.

Then have I seen pale clouds retreat before

The glory of God’s coming, and soft night

Die down in splendor on the voiceless Horn;

And while keen players bent above their board,

Have watched the gold of distant stars appear

Circling in music over yon white brows.