Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Switzerland and Austria: Vol. XVI. 1876–79.
The Alps
By James Montgomery (1771–1854)Are conscious beings to mine eye,
When at the break of day they stand
Like giants looking through the sky,
To hail the sun’s unrisen car,
That gilds their diadems of snow;
While one by one, as star by star,
Their peaks in ether glow.
When to the horizontal ray,
The many-tinctured vapors roll
In evanescent wreaths away,
And leave them naked on the scene,
The emblems of eternity,
The same as they have ever been,
And shall forever be.
Their cliffs, like images in dreams,
Color and shape and station change;
Here crags and caverns, woods and streams
And seas of adamantine ice,
With gardens, vineyards, fields embraced,
Open a way to Paradise,
Through all the splendid waste.
Wide through their pastures roam the herds;
Peace on the uplands feeds her flocks,
Till suddenly the king of birds
Pouncing a lamb, they start for fear;
He bears his bleating prize on high;
The well-known plaint his nestlings hear,
And raise a ravening cry.
At noon behold his orb o’ercast;
Hollow and dreary o’er the pines,
Like distant ocean, moans the blast;
The mountains darken at the sound,
Put on their armor, and anon,
In panoply of clouds wrapt round,
Their forms from sight are gone.
Of thunder rends the echoing air;
Lo! war in heaven!—thick-flashing out
Through torrent-rains red lightnings glare,
As though the Alps, with mortal ire,
At once a thousand voices raised,
And with a thousand swords of fire
At once in conflict blazed.
Enthrone the storm-dispelling sun,
And let the triple rainbow rest
O’er all the mountain-tops:—’T is done;
The deluge ceases; bold and bright
The rainbow shoots from hill to hill;
Down sinks the sun; on presses night;
—Mont Blanc is lovely still.
The world of shadows at thy feet;
And mark how calmly, overhead,
The stars like saints in glory meet:
While hid in solitude sublime,
Methinks I muse on Nature’s tomb,
And hear the passing foot of Time
Step through the gloom.
From precipice to precipice,
An avalanche’s ruins dash
Down to the nethermost abyss;
Invisible, the ear alone
Follows the uproar till it dies;
Echo on echo, groan for groan,
From deep to deep replies.
Darkness that may be felt;—but soon
The silver-clouded east reveals
The midnight spectre of the moon;
In half-eclipse she lifts her horn,
Yet, o’er the host of heaven supreme,
Brings the faint semblance of a morn
With her awakening beam.
Unreal mockeries appear;
With blacker shadows, ghastlier lights,
Enlarging as she climbs the sphere;
A crowd of apparitions pale!
I hold my breath in chill suspense,—
They seem so exquisitely frail,—
Lest they should vanish hence.
Lake of Geneva! thee I trace,
Like Dian’s crescent far beneath,
And beautiful as Dian’s face.
Pride of this land of liberty!
All that thy waves reflect I love;
Where heaven itself, brought down to thee,
Looks fairer than above.
The trance of poesy is o’er,
And I am here at dawn of day,
Gazing on mountains as before;
For all the strange mutations wrought
Were magic feats of my own mind;
Thus, in the fairy-land of thought,
Whate’er I seek I find.
Buildings of God not made with hands,
Whose word performs whate’er he wills,
Whose word, though ye shall perish, stands;
Can there be eyes that look on you,
Till tears of rapture make them dim,
Nor in his works the Maker view,
Then lose his works in him?
Or love him not when I behold,
Be all I ever knew forgot;
My pulse stand still, my heart grow cold;
Transformed to ice, ’twixt earth and sky,
On yonder cliff my form be seen,
That all may ask, but none reply,
What my offence hath been.