 | Poems |  |
51
THE BERNESE ALPS AT SUNSET.
Ye mighty offspring of the strong young Time!Gigantic brood of earth's primeval travail!
Before your silent, beaming majesty,
With strange delight, with solemn joy, I gaze,
The mind upmounting with your loftiness.
Sublimity makes such familiar haunt
Among your grandeurs manifold, that Beauty
Shrinks modest down, to nestle at your feet.
Ye are alone; changeless, where all things change;
Motionless 'midst the unceasing flow of life.
52
Ye lift your speechless, spotless heads, snow-blazoned,
'Bove nether influence; cleaving earthborn clouds,
That round your cold sides cling, like living arms
Around a corpse, insensate to their touch.
A mystery ye are; and from the plane
And common of this world sudden ye rear
Your giant forms, 'midst time's recurring spans,
Fit emblems of eternity. Since first
From Zurich's humble hills your image loomed,
A heaven-suspended vision, on my sight,
Day upon day I 've journeyed towards ye, wondering;
Till now I stand, awed, baffled, at your base.
Darkness fast fills the earth, but your white peaks
Glow in the sunshine. Telegraphs 'twixt worlds!
Your sky-ward fronts brighten the sun's last ray,
To me a herald from my far-off home.
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