Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful form, Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines, How silently! Around thee, and above, Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black, An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest itAs 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 worshipped 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 though Yea, with my life, and life"s own secret joy;Till the dilating soul, enrapt, transfused, Into the mighty vision passing-there,As in her natural form, swelled vast to heaven.
Awake, my soul! not only passive praise Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears,④Mute 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 sovereign of the vale!
Oh, struggling with the darkness all the night,THE VALE OF CHAMOUNIAnd visited all night by troops of stars,Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink, -Companion of the morning star at dawn,⑥Thyself Earth"s rosy star,
⑦
and of the dawn
Co-herald,
wake, O wake, and utter praise!
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?
And you, ye five wild torrents
fiercely glad!
Who called you forth from night and utter death, From dark and icy caverns called you forth, Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks,For ever shattered, 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 amain- Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice, And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge.
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 flowers⑩Of loveliest blue,spread garlands at your feet? -
GOD! let the torrents, like a shout of nations,Answer! and let the ice plains echo, GOD!
GOD! sing, ye meadow streams, with gladsome voice! Ye pine groves, with your soft and soul-like 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 winders of the elements!
Utter forth GOD! and fill the hills with praise!
- S. T. COLERIDGE
WORDS
beguiling, fascinating. cataracts, waterfalls. ceaselessly, constantly. companion, associate. dilating, expanding. entranced, enraptured. eternal, everlasting. invulnerable, impregnable.
precipitous, steep. ravines, gorges. shattered, shivered. struggling, contending. substantial, solid. transfused, translated. worshipped, adored.
NOTES
① Chamouni, a celebrated village and valley in Savoy, at the foot of Mont Blanc.-This hymn should be compared with "Adam and Eve"s Morning Hymn," from Milton"s Paradise Lost ; and also with Thomson"s "Hymn" appended to The Seasons .
② Blanc, the highest mountain in Europe; lit. "the white mountain" from its peak beingperpetually snow-clad. Height, 15, 744 feet. It is in France, on the borders of Savoy and Piedmont.
③ The Arve and Arveiron, torrents which have their sources in the glaciers of MontBlanc.
④ Ecstasy, transport; a degree of delight which absorbs the whole mind; lit. a standing out of oneself. [Gr. ek-stasis , a standing out.]
⑤ Sovereign of the vale, an apostrophe, or address to Mont Blanc.
⑥ Earth"s rosy star, a reference to beautiful colours which the snow crystals assume in the sunshine, especially at sunrise.
⑦ Of the dawn co-herald-Because, from its great height, it catches and reflects the firstrays of light long before surrounding objects.
⑧ Five wild torrents.-Besides the Arve and Arveiron, already mentioned, five outstanding torrents rush down the sides of the mountain.
⑨ Motionless torrents.-This and the preceding lines describe glaciers-slowly moving streams of ice which are formed in the higher parts of the Alps, and gradually move down to the warmer regions, where they melt away. In point of fact glaciers are not "motionless," and not always "silent." Their motion, which resembles that of a river-the centre advancing faster than the sides-varies in rate from 100 to 400 feet in a year. The different rates at which the different parts of a glacier move often cause rents to be made across it, and these are accompanied by loud explosions like the reports of cannon.
⑩ Living flowers of loveliest blue-the blue gentian, which grows luxuriantly on the very skirts of the glaciers. See also seven lines below-"Ye living flowers," &c.