The silent courts, where night and day Into their stone-carved basins cold The splashing icy fountains play – The humid corridors behold!
Where, ghost-like in the deepening night Cowl'd forms brush by in gleaming white.
The chapel, where no organ's peal Invests the stern and naked prayer With penitential cries they kneel And wrestle; rising then, with bare And white uplifted faces stand, Passing the Host from hand to hand;
Each takes, and then his visage wan Is buried in his cowl once more.
The suffering Son of man the knee-worn floor And where they sleep, that wooden bed, Which shall their coffin be, when dead!
The library, where tract and tome Not to feed priestly pride are there, To hymn the conquering march of Rome, Nor yet to amuse, as ours are! They paint of souls the inner strife, Their drops of blood, their death in life.
The garden, overgrown yet mild, See, fragrant herbs are flowering there!
Strong children of the Alpine wild Whose culture is the brethren's care; Of human tasks their only one,
And cheerful works beneath the sun.
Those halls, too, destined to contain Each its own pilgrim-host of old, From England, Germany, or Spain - All are before me! I behold
The House, the Brotherhood austere ! And what am I, that I am here?
Before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni
AST thou a charm to stay the morning-star In his steep course? So long he seems to
On thy bald, awful head, O sovran Blanc ! The Arve and Arveiron at thy base
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 it, As 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
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 thought-
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, Mute 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 sovran of the vale! O struggling with the darkness all the night, And visited all night by troops of stars,
Or when they climb the sky or when they sink Companion of the morning-star at dawn, Thyself Earth's rosy star, 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, Forever shattered and the same forever? 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! Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!
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 flowers
Of 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 wonders of the elements!
Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise! Thou too, hoar Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks,
Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard, Shoots downward, glittering through the pure
Into the depth of clouds that veil thy breast- Thou too again, stupendous Mountain! thou That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low In adoration, upward from thy base
Slow travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears, Solemnly seemest, like a vapory cloud, To rise before me Rise, O ever rise!
Rise like a cloud of incense, from the Earth! Thou kingly Spirit throned among the hills, Thou dread ambassador from Earth to Heaven, Great Hierarch! tell thou the silent sky, And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun, Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God. Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Lines written in the Vale of Chamouni
HE everlasting universe of things.
Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid
dark now glittering - now reflecting gloom
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