 | Sonnets in Switzerland and Italy |  |
141
WAYFARERS ON THE GEMMI
IN THE ALP-SPITAL-MATTE
I met a traveller in a desert place:
I said, ‘I speak because I am a man;
These circling cliffs are dumb since time began,
They stand for ever speechless face to face—
Yea, even the torrent hushes in this place;
Noiseless as air yon startled chamois ran,
These flowers about our feet live out their span,
Then die into the ground, a silent race.’
I said, ‘I speak because I am a man;
These circling cliffs are dumb since time began,
They stand for ever speechless face to face—
Yea, even the torrent hushes in this place;
Noiseless as air yon startled chamois ran,
These flowers about our feet live out their span,
Then die into the ground, a silent race.’
And so we stood and communed for a while,
He from the Rhone, and I from Kander come;
We shall not meet until that other land,
But I remember how he grasped my hand,
How sad eyes flashed, and wan lips seemed to smile
To hear again the accents of his home.
He from the Rhone, and I from Kander come;
We shall not meet until that other land,
But I remember how he grasped my hand,
How sad eyes flashed, and wan lips seemed to smile
To hear again the accents of his home.
| Sonnets in Switzerland and Italy | |