Who cross to the hillside
Thin-sprinkled with farms,

Where the high woods strip sadly
Their yellowing arms,—

Ye are bound for the mountains!
Ah! with you let me go

Where your cold, distant barrier,
The vast range of snow,

Through the loose clouds lifts dimly
Its white peaks in air,-

How deep is their stillness!

Ah! would I were there!

Hark! fast by the window
The rushing winds go,
To the ice-cumbered gorges,
The vast seas of snow!

There the torrents drive upward

Their rock-strangled hum;

There the avalanche thunders

The hoarse torrent dumb.

-I come, O ye mountains!

Ye torrents, I come!

Hark! the wind rushes past us!

Ah! with that let me go

To the clear, waning hill-side,

Unspotted by snow,

There to watch, o'er the sunk vale,

The frore mountain wall,

Where the niched snow-bed sprays down

Its powdery fall.

There its dusky blue clusters

The aconite spreads;

There the pines slope, the cloud-strips

Hung soft in their heads.

No life but, at moments,
The mountain bee's hum.
-I come, O ye mountains!
Ye pine-woods, I come!

Blow, ye winds! lift me with you!

I come to the wild.

Fold closely, O Nature!

Thine arms round thy child.

To thee only God granted
A heart ever new-
To all always open,
To all always true.

Ah! calm me, restore me;
And dry up my tears

On thy high mountain-platforms,
Where morn first appears;

Where the white mists, for ever,
Are spread and unfurl'd —

In the stir of the forces

Whence issued the world.

Matthew Arnold

A

MORGENLIED

T Mürren let the morning lead thee out To walk upon the cold and cloven hills, To hear the congregated mountains shout Their paean of a thousand foaming rills: Raimented with intolerable light,

The snow-peaks stand above thee, row on row Arising, each a seraph in his might;

An organ each of varied stop doth blow.

Heaven's azure dome trembles through all her spheres,

Feeling that music vibrate; and the sun Raises his tenor as he upward steers;

And all the glory-coated mists that run Beneath him in the valley, hear his voice, And cry unto the dewy fields: rejoice!

John Addington Symonds

PASSAGE OF THE APENNINES

ISTEN, listen, Mary mine,

Apennine,

It bursts on the roof like the thunder's roar,
Or like the sea on a northern shore,
Heard in its raging ebb and flow

By the captives pent in the cave below.
The Apennine in the light of day
Is a mighty mountain dim and grey,

Which between the earth and sky doth lay;
But when night comes, a chaos dread

On the dim starlight then is spread,

And the Apennine walks abroad with the storm.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

THE CLOUD

BRING fresh showers for the thirsting flow

ers,

From the seas and the streams;

I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.

From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,

When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,

As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.

I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night 'tis my pillow white,

While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skyey bowers,
Lightning my pilot sits,

In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,
It struggles and howls at fits;

Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me,

Lured by the love of the genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea;

Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,
Over the lakes and the plains,

Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,
The Spirit he loves remains;

And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile, Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,

When the morning star shines dead,

As on the jag of a mountain crag,

Which an earthquake rocks and swings,

An eagle alit one moment may sit

In the light of its golden wings.

And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,

Its ardors of rest and of love, And the crimson pall of eve may fall

From the depths of heaven above, With wings folded I rest, on mine airy nest, As still as a brooding dove.

That orbed maiden with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the moon,

Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn;

And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angels hear,

May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,

The stars peep behind her and peer;

And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
Like a swarm of golden bees,

When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,
Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen thro' me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.

I bind the sun's throne with a burning zone,
And the moon's with a girdle of pearl;
The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and
swim,

When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl. From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape, Over a torrent sea,

Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,

The mountains its columns be.

The triumphal arch thro' which I march
With hurricane, fire, and snow,

When the powers of the air are chained to my chair,

Is the million-colored bow;

The sphere-fire above its soft colors wove, While the moist earth was laughing below.