University of Virginia Library

Hills, mountains, lakes, farewell!
Summits and snows;
And thou, thou sunful air of Engadin;
Gentian and daisy and bell,
Where the wind blows;
Yea, all thou Nature that mine eyes have seen:
Farewell!
Never again
Shall we behold your archèd skies,
Save when estranged by pain,
With pale and old and other eyes.

Here, to these sights,
Enlaced about with human thought
We came.
A terror spelled us at the windy lights;
Our breath grew lame
And on this world our vision fell distraught.
Too stinging near the sun!
The space too utter large! the air
Acrid so fine it was!
Our beaten spirit, impotent to share,
Became as glass
Brittle and dead before the vision:
We could our face but hide,
Our arms about us for a pall;
“Heaven has shattered us,” we cried and cried.
Our ear dissolved; our voice quavered; and we were small.

Yet the rich passage of the natural days
Dragging their carmine webs and violet hems
Over the flowered world;
And all about unfurled
The languid nets of evening dripping gems
Thro' the low rays;
With aftertrain of stars,
Sober divinities and simple diadems!
Where on your cars
You move in circle to the tracks of day!
Ye enfolded us and we did lose
The little habit of the hour and way.
We have seen—
Above the fluid air,
The effacèd languor of ravine
And this long valley peopled as a lair
With smoky forms—
The morn's gray-lidded star
Alone;
We 've felt the storm's
Approach, the rocks with echo jar;
We 've heard as war
Of world on world the moving glacier moan:
Till to the brain
The healing knowledge of eternal things,
The sufferance of limit and the lore
O' the world's serene adjustment quiet gave;
Till we felt sorrow for the obedient star,
Pity and patience for the taxèd moon
And all this broil of universe that serves
Its taskmaster; O, till it seemèd then
Time was a noisy bellman, tiredly
That rung in stellar deserts his dull bell
Calling the planets home. A finished day!
The orbèd meadow-land of solar gold
Was waxen sterile and embrowned; a spell
Had soon distilled the system to a drop,
And of the whole destroyed
One fiery globule wavered in the endless void.—
So runs the dream about your height!
So man may stand with open eye,
A dying acolyte
Amid your ceremonies that do not die;
And hear,
In sober and subduèd soul,
Without fear
The roll
And tidal motion of the sacramental air.

Farewell! again farewell!
From where ye dwell
We shall descend within the gentle plain,—
There life is speakable:
The while your train,
In light of days that set not but still fare
Upon the spirit's skies,
More sober, more serene
Shall rise,
From all the things that were
Apart,
To that high backward of the heart
Whereto the thought that travels ne'er hath wholly been.