If ever your feet, like my own, O reader, have traversed these mountains alone, Have you felt your identity shrink and contract At the sound of the distant and dim cataract, In the presence of nature's immensities? Say, Have you hung o'er the torrent, bedew'd with its spray, And, leaving the rock-way, contorted and roll'd, Like a huge couchant Typhon, fold heaped over fold, Track'd the summits from which every step that you tread Rolls the loose stones, with thunder below, to the bed Of invisible waters, whose mistical sound Fills with awful suggestions the dizzy profound?
And, laboring onwards, at last through a break In the walls of the world, burst at once on the lake?
If you have, this description I might have withheld.
You remember how strangely your bosom has swell'd At the vision reveal'd. On the overwork'd soil Of this planet, enjoyment is sharpen'd by toil;
And one seems, by the pain of ascending the height, To have conquer'd a claim of that wonderful sight.
XX.
Hail, virginal daughter of cold Espingo!
Hail, Naiad, whose realm is the cloud and the snow;
For o'er thee the angels have whiten'd their wings, And the thirst of the seraphs is quench'd at thy springs.
What hand hath, in heaven, upheld thine expanse?
When the breath of creation first fashion'd fair France, Did the Spirit of Ill, in his downthrow appalling, Bruise the world, and thus hollow thy basin while falling?
Ere the mammoth was born hath some monster unnamed The base of thy mountainous pedestal framed?
And later, when Power to Beauty was wed, Did some delicate fairy embroider thy bed With the fragile valerian and wild columbine?
XXI.
But thy secret thou keepest, and I will keep mine;
For once gazing on thee, it flash'd on my soul, All that secret! I saw in a vision the whole Vast design of the ages; what was and shall be!
Hands unseen raised the veil of a great mystery For one moment. I saw, and I heard; and my heart Bore witness within me to infinite art, In infinite power proving infinite love;
Caught the great choral chant, mark'd the dread pageant move--
The divine Whence and Whither of life! But, O daughter Of Oo, not more safe in the deep silent water Is thy secret, than mine in my heart. Even so.
What I then saw and heard, the world never shall know.
XXII.
The dimness of eve o'er the valleys had closed, The rain had ceased falling, the mountains reposed.
The stars had enkindled in luminous courses Their slow-sliding lamps, when, remounting their horses, The riders retraversed that mighty serration Of rock-work. Thus left to its own desolation, The lake, from whose glimmering limits the last Transient pomp of the pageants of sunset had pass'd, Drew into its bosom the darkness, and only Admitted within it one image--a lonely And tremulous phantom of flickering light That follow'd the mystical moon through the night.
XXIII.
It was late when o'er Luchon at last they descended.
To her chalet, in silence, Lord Alfred attended Lucile. As they parted, she whispered him low, "You have made to me, Alfred, an offer I know All the worth of, believe me. I cannot reply Without time for reflection. Good night!--not good by."
"Alas! 'tis the very same answer you made To the Duc de Luvois but a day since," he said.
"No, Alfred! the very same, no," she replied.
Her voice shook. "If you love me, obey me. Abide My answer to-morrow."
XXIV.
Alas, Cousin Jack!
You Cassandra in breeches and boots! turn your back To the ruins of Troy. Prophet, seek not for glory Amongst thine own people.
I follow my story.
