Mont Blanc

 

Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni
BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
                                    I 
The everlasting universe of things 
Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves, 
Now dark—now glittering—now reflecting gloom— 
Now lending splendour, where from secret springs 
The source of human thought its tribute brings 
Of waters—with a sound but half its own, 
Such as a feeble brook will oft assume, 
In the wild woods, among the mountains lone, 
Where waterfalls around it leap for ever, 
Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river 
Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves. 

                                     II 
Thus thou, Ravine of Arve—dark, deep Ravine— 
Thou many-colour'd, many-voiced vale, 
Over whose pines, and crags, and caverns sail 
Fast cloud-shadows and sunbeams: awful scene, 
Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down 
From the ice-gulfs that gird his secret throne, 
Bursting through these dark mountains like the flame 
Of lightning through the tempest;—thou dost lie, 
Thy giant brood of pines around thee clinging, 
Children of elder time, in whose devotion 
The chainless winds still come and ever came 
To drink their odours, and their mighty swinging 
To hear—an old and solemn harmony; 
Thine earthly rainbows stretch'd across the sweep 
Of the aethereal waterfall, whose veil 
Robes some unsculptur'd image; the strange sleep 
Which when the voices of the desert fail 
Wraps all in its own deep eternity; 
Thy caverns echoing to the Arve's commotion, 
A loud, lone sound no other sound can tame; 
Thou art pervaded with that ceaseless motion, 
Thou art the path of that unresting sound— 
Dizzy Ravine! and when I gaze on thee 
I seem as in a trance sublime and strange 
To muse on my own separate fantasy, 
My own, my human mind, which passively 
Now renders and receives fast influencings, 
Holding an unremitting interchange 
With the clear universe of things around; 
One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings 
Now float above thy darkness, and now rest 
Where that or thou art no unbidden guest, 
In the still cave of the witch Poesy, 
Seeking among the shadows that pass by 
Ghosts of all things that are, some shade of thee, 
Some phantom, some faint image; till the breast 
From which they fled recalls them, thou art there! 

                                     III 
Some say that gleams of a remoter world 
Visit the soul in sleep, that death is slumber, 
And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber 
Of those who wake and live.—I look on high; 
Has some unknown omnipotence unfurl'd 
The veil of life and death? or do I lie 
In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep 
Spread far around and inaccessibly 
Its circles? For the very spirit fails, 
Driven like a homeless cloud from steep to steep 
That vanishes among the viewless gales! 
Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky, 
Mont Blanc appears—still, snowy, and serene; 
Its subject mountains their unearthly forms 
Pile around it, ice and rock; broad vales between 
Of frozen floods, unfathomable deeps, 
Blue as the overhanging heaven, that spread 
And wind among the accumulated steeps; 
A desert peopled by the storms alone, 
Save when the eagle brings some hunter's bone, 
And the wolf tracks her there—how hideously 
Its shapes are heap'd around! rude, bare, and high, 
Ghastly, and scarr'd, and riven.—Is this the scene 
Where the old Earthquake-daemon taught her young 
Ruin? Were these their toys? or did a sea 
Of fire envelop once this silent snow? 
None can reply—all seems eternal now. 
The wilderness has a mysterious tongue 
Which teaches awful doubt, or faith so mild, 
So solemn, so serene, that man may be, 
But for such faith, with Nature reconcil'd; 
Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal 
Large codes of fraud and woe; not understood 
By all, but which the wise, and great, and good 
Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel. 

                                     IV 
The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams, 
Ocean, and all the living things that dwell 
Within the daedal earth; lightning, and rain, 
Earthquake, and fiery flood, and hurricane, 
The torpor of the year when feeble dreams 
Visit the hidden buds, or dreamless sleep 
Holds every future leaf and flower; the bound 
With which from that detested trance they leap; 
The works and ways of man, their death and birth, 
And that of him and all that his may be; 
All things that move and breathe with toil and sound 
Are born and die; revolve, subside, and swell. 
Power dwells apart in its tranquillity, 
Remote, serene, and inaccessible: 
And this, the naked countenance of earth, 
On which I gaze, even these primeval mountains 
Teach the adverting mind. The glaciers creep 
Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains, 
Slow rolling on; there, many a precipice 
Frost and the Sun in scorn of mortal power 
Have pil'd: dome, pyramid, and pinnacle, 
A city of death, distinct with many a tower 
And wall impregnable of beaming ice. 
Yet not a city, but a flood of ruin 
Is there, that from the boundaries of the sky 
Rolls its perpetual stream; vast pines are strewing 
Its destin'd path, or in the mangled soil 
Branchless and shatter'd stand; the rocks, drawn down 
From yon remotest waste, have overthrown 
The limits of the dead and living world, 
Never to be reclaim'd. The dwelling-place 
Of insects, beasts, and birds, becomes its spoil; 
Their food and their retreat for ever gone, 
So much of life and joy is lost. The race 
Of man flies far in dread; his work and dwelling 
Vanish, like smoke before the tempest's stream, 
And their place is not known. Below, vast caves 
Shine in the rushing torrents' restless gleam, 
Which from those secret chasms in tumult welling 
Meet in the vale, and one majestic River, 
The breath and blood of distant lands, for ever 
Rolls its loud waters to the ocean-waves, 
Breathes its swift vapours to the circling air. 

                                     V 
Mont Blanc yet gleams on high:—the power is there, 
The still and solemn power of many sights, 
And many sounds, and much of life and death. 
In the calm darkness of the moonless nights, 
In the lone glare of day, the snows descend 
Upon that Mountain; none beholds them there, 
Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun, 
Or the star-beams dart through them. Winds contend 
Silently there, and heap the snow with breath 
Rapid and strong, but silently! Its home 
The voiceless lightning in these solitudes 
Keeps innocently, and like vapour broods 
Over the snow. The secret Strength of things 
Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome 
Of Heaven is as a law, inhabits thee! 
And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea, 
If to the human mind's imaginings 
Silence and solitude were vacancy? 

 

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