THE HOUR BEFORE SUN-RISE.
HAST thou a charm to stay the morning star
In his steep course-so long he seems to pause
On thy bald awful head, O Chamouny!
The Arvè and Arveiron at thy base
Chamouny is one of the highest mountain valleys of the Barony of Faucigny in the Savoy Alps; and exhibits a kind of fairy world, in which the wildest appearances (I had almost said, horrors) of nature alternate with the softest, and most beautiful. The chain of Mont Blanc is its boundary; and, besides the Arvè, it is filled with sounds from the Arveiron, which rushes from the melted glaciers, like a giant, mad with joy, from a dungeon, and forms other torrents of snow-water, having their rise in the glaciers, which slope down into the valley. The beautiful gentiana major, or greater gentian, with blossoms of the brightest blue, grows in large companies, a few steps from the never-melted ice of the glaciers. I thought it an affecting emblem of the boldness of human hope, venturing near, and, as it were, leaning over the brink of the grave. Indeed, the whole vale, its every light, its every sound, must needs impress every mind, not utterly callous, with the thought-Who would be, who could be, an Atheist, in this valley of wonders! Those who have visited this vale in their journeys among the Alps, I am confident will not find the sentiments and feelings expressed, or at tempted to be expressed, in the following poem, extravagant.
Rave ceaselessly; but thou, dread mountain form,
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines
How silently! Around thee, and above,
Deep is the sky, and black: transpicuous, deep,
An ebon mass! Methinks, thou piercest it.
As with a wedge! But when I look again,
It seems thy own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity.
O dread and silent form! I gaz'd upon thee,
Till thou, still present to my bodily eye,
Didst vanish from my thought. Entranc'd in pray'r,
I worshipp'd the INVISIBLE alone.
Yet thou, meantime, wast working on my soul,
E'en like some deep enchanting melody,
So sweet, we know not, we are list'ning to it..
But I awake, and with a busier mind,
And active will self-conscious, offer now
Not, as before, involuntary pray'r
And passive adoration!
Awake, awake! and thou, my heart, awake!
Awake, ye rocks! Ye forest pines, awake!
Green fields, and icy cliffs! All join my hymn!
And thou, O silent mountain, sole and bare,
O blacker, than 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 fill'd thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee father of perpetual streams?
And you, ye five wild torrents, fiercely glad,
Who call'd you forth from Night and utter Death!
From darkness let you loose, and icy dens,
Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks
For ever shatter'd, 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 shall the billows stiffen, and have rest?"
Ye ice-falls! ye that from yon dizzy heights
Adown enormous ravines steeply slope,
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopp'd at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!
Who made you glorious, as the gates of Heav'n,
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who with lovely flow'rs
Of living blue spread garlands at your feet?
GOD! GOD! The torrents, like a shout of nations,
Utter! The ice-plain bursts, and answers GOD!
GOD, sing the meadow-streams with gladsome voice,
And fine groves with their soft, and soul-like sound,
The silent snow-mass, loos'ning, thunders GOD!
Ye dreadless flow'rs! that fringe th' eternal frost!
Ye wild goats, bounding by the eagle's nest!
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain blast!
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
Ye signs and wonders of the element,
Utter forth, GOD! and fill the hills with praise !
And thou, O silent Form, alone and bare,
Whom, as I lift again my head bow'd low
In adoration, I again behold,
And to thy summit upward from thy base
Sweep slowly with dim eyes suffus'd by tears,
Awake, thou mountain form! rise, like a cloud!
Rise, like a cloud of incense, from the earth!
Thou kingly spirit thron'd among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from Earth to Heav'n-
Great hierarch, tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell the rising sun,
Earth with her thousand voices calls on GOD!
WITH languid heats while nature burns,
Full in the sun the peasant turns
The parch'd, unyielding soil;
Nor feels the fierce, oppressive ray,
Nor heeds the long, laborious day,
So HOPE befriend his toil.-
The prisoner in his dark, damp cell,
So smiling HOPE there deign to dwell,
Forgets impending pain;
And every grief that stung his mind,
And every fear to her resign'd,
Sings to his sounding chain.
ALAS! my friend, how vainly dost thou tell me,
That Reason may tranquillity restore,
And with her soft persuasive voice impel me
To check my sorrows and to sigh no more.
Ah! rather I would ask that lenient power,
Oblivious Time, some solace to impart,
Did I not feel that each revolving hour
Binds him more firmly to my aching heart;
Or I would court the silken smiles of Pleasure,
Athwart my path a cheering beam to throw ;
But no her once lov'd sounds, in sprightly measure,
Seem all discordant to the ear of Woe.
Nor mirth, nor distant space, nor change of season,
My bosom's secret anguish can remove;
All, all are vain,--but chief thy boasted Reason,
For it was she, alas! that bade me love.
His virtues, graces, genius she repeated,
And much I gloried in the heart I won;
Nor did I blush, though easily intreated,
Į scarce had seen him ere I lost my own.
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