Christ's Company and Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

What I had seen a far-away white cloud
So long, had grown a mountain by the morn;
A thousand torrents at its feet were loud,
And rolled one volume o'er its lowest horn,

Which gloried like one whitened wave of sea;
And far above the mountain crags were pitched,
Like a white mocking hand which beckoned me
In gesture, answered by the boat's prow twitched

Back o'er the lake, leaving me standing there
Alone upon the taunting mountain shore:
Now for my life, methought; and first my care
Was given to tread the shattered valley o'er,

With its rude waste of stones like lions couched
Upon the desert; then I reached, indeed,
The mountain, where its mighty spur debouched,
A vast earth dragon, whose coils half recede

Into the bowels of its awful mother;
And on its bulk my little pathway wound;
Point after point of grisly light did smother
The horror which they could not fully sound.

And I ascended till I met the wrath
Of white snow, dabbled on the gnashing teeth
Of slate rocks in the avalanche's path;
Then stayed, and looked above, and looked beneath.

Above—stand up the crystal spears of rock,
Heaven's army, ever charging into light,
Retreating into cloud; not less than flock
Of dreadful angels from the Sapphirine height;

And not in that frank mystery, pretence
Of wing or palm, or radiant hands or feet:
I see the clear-aired crystal, and the sense
Of spiritual presence grows complete.

Below—two figures in the morning mist
Move up for ever to the mountain's shoulder,
On which my rest is settled; then they list,
To fade for ever over spur and boulder.

I cannot track the light within their eyes,
I cannot track the marching of their feet;
I only know, whenever they arise,
The sense of human presence grows complete.