On thy bald awful head, O sovran Blanc ! Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines, 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, 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: Till the dilating Soul, enwrapt, transfused, Into the mighty vision passing-there, Awake, my soul! Not only passive praise Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears, 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! Co-herald: wake! oh wake! and utter praise! Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in Earth? Who fill'd thy countenance with rosy light? Who made thee parent of perpetual streams? And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad! Who call'd you forth from night and utter death, From dark and icy caverns call'd you forth, Down those precipitous, black, jagged. Rocks, For ever shatter'd, and the same for ever? Who gave you your invulnerable life, Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy, 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 amainTorrents, 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 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! Oh struggling with the darkness all the God! sing, ye meadow-streams, with glad night, 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 some voice! Ye pine groves, with your soft and soullike 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! Ye eagles, playmates 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! The glacier's cold and restless mass Or with its ice delay. I am the spirit of the place, Could make the mountain bow And quiver to his cavern'd base,— And what with me wouldst Thou? LORD BYRON. THE ARSENAL AT SPRINGFIELD. Thou, too, hoar Mount! with thy sky- THIS is the Arsenal. From floor to ceil pointing peaks, Oft from whose feet the avalanche, un heard, ing, Like a huge organ, rise the burnish'd arms, Shoots downward, glittering through the But from their silent pipes no anthem pure serene Into the depth of clouds, that veil thy breast pealing Startles the villages with strange alarms. Thou, too, again, stupendous Mountain! Ah! what a sound will rise-how wild and dreary Thou dread ambassador from Earth to On helm and harness rings the Saxon The soldiers' revels in the midst of pillage, | And she's gone to the Lake of the Dismal The wail of famine in beleaguer'd towns; The bursting shell, the gateway wrench'd asunder, Swamp, Where all night long, by a firefly lamp, She paddles her white canoe. The rattling musketry, the clashing "And her firefly lamp I soon shall see, blade, And ever and anon, in tone of thunder, Is it, O man, with such discordant noises, And jarrest the celestial harmonies? Were half the power that fills the world with terror, And her paddle I soon shall hear; Away to the Dismal Swamp he speeds,— And man never trod before. Were half the wealth bestow'd on camps And when on the earth he sank to sleep, The warrior's name would be a name abhorrèd, And every nation that should lift again If slumber his eyelids knew, He lay where the deadly vine doth weep And near him the she-wolf stirr'd the brake, And the copper-snake breathed in his ear, Its hand against a brother, on its forehead Till he starting cried, from his dream Would wear for evermore the curse of Cain! Down the dark future, through long generations, The echoing sounds grow fainter and then cease; And like a bell, with solemn, sweet vibrations, I hear once more the voice of Christ say, "Peace!" awake, Peace!--and no longer from its brazen Till he hollow'd a boat of the birchen |