A Hour in the Mountains

A Hour in the Mountains

HIGH amid the mountain ridges

I have clim'b, and stand alone,

Where the mist the torrent bridges

In a world of stream and stone.

Dark ravines, and summits boary,

Downward steeps that scare the view,

Blocks whose sculpture hides a story

Human wisdom never knew.

Clouds that yield no voice of thunder,

Shifting isles of winds and rain,

Sunny gleams with shows of wonder

Opening wide the distant main.

Lonely vastness, might unmeasured,

Deep ye fill the laboring breast!

In your halls uncouth are treasured

Power that make us gravely blest.

While aloud the chasm before me

Sounds the torrent's endless voice,

There's a rainbow arching o'er me,

And in air my dreams rejoice.

From their wizard cauldron boiling

Ghastly vapours roll and swell,

Round each crag and buttress coiling,

Sealike pouring through the dell.

Now again they flit and vanish,

And the green hills dawn anew,

And exulting sunbeams banish

All the landscape's deathlike hue.

Earth and sky, to thought ye win me,

Strong below, and bright above!

May ye never weaken in me

Man's sublimer heart of love.

Unattributed

2:20, p. 80

1838.07.07