LINES

WRITTEN IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI.

[The Poem is here simply reprinted verbatim in order to complete the book as Shelley issued it. The only alteration of text is the substitution of tracks for the misprint tracts in line 2, page 203. For various readings &c. see Vol. I of my edition of the Poetical Works, pages 72 et seq. The date at the end of the poem has been altered so as to aecord with the facts. "June 23, 1816" is printed by both Shelley and Mrs. Shelley; but that is the date of the excursion from Montalegre to Hermance and Nerni. (See pages 171-2); and it was not till the 21st of July that Shelley and his party entered the Vale of Chamouni,-not till the 23rd that he saw from the source of the Arveiron the glacier of Montanvert, and visited in the evening the glacier of Boisson (see page 192). The primary inspiration recorded by Mrs Shelley as having taken place while the poet lingered on the Bridge of Arve on his way through the Vale of Chamouni," seems to be referable to the 21st. when, on the road from Servoz (pages 189-90), the party must have crossed the bridge which Shelley calls (page 197) "Pont Pellisier, a wooden bridge over the Arve, and the ravine of the Arve"; but the poem, "composed," as Shelley says in the preface (page 120), "under the immediate impression of the deep and powerful feelings excited by the objects which it attempts to describe," was in all probability first written down on the evening of the 23rd of July 1816, whether while the poet was out with Ducrée, or after his return to Chamouni. We cannot, however, but assume from its high finish, that it was much elaborated on more than one occasion between that evening and the date of publication.-H. B. F.]

66

MONT BLANC.

LINES WRITTEN IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI.

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-coloured, 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 gulphs that gird his secret throne,
Bursting through these dark mountains like the flame
Of lightning thro' 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 stretched across the sweep
Of the ethereal waterfall, whose veil

Robes some unsculptured image; the strange sleep
Which when the voices of the desart 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 phantasy,
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 unfurled
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 desart 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 heaped around! rude, bare, and high,
Ghastly, and scarred, and riven.-Is this the scene
Where the old Earthquake-dæmon taught her young
Ruin? Were these their toys? or did a sea
Of fire, envelope 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 reconciled;
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 dædal 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 primæval 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 piled: 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 destined path, or in the mangled soil