Collected Works (Vol. I)

102 MYSTERIES: LYRICAL AND DRAMATIC Where of late the plain extended Rose a mighty mass of stone, Pierced the clouds, and sprang: unmeasured In magnificence--alone ! There the clansmen steod and wondered, As the rock, supremely dire, Split and trembied, cracked and thundered, Lit with living flecks of fire. Spake the chief: ‘4 My trusty clansmen, This is not the day of doom ; This is honour to the mighty ; Clansmen, this is Alpin’s tomb.” NYMPSFIELD RECTORY, December 1893. A DESCENT OF TIE JuLy 14, 1896. MOENCIH.! AN island of the mist. White companies Of clouds thronged wondrously against the hills, And in the east. a darkening of the winds That held awhile their breath for very rage, Too wild for aught but vaporous quivering Of melting fleeces, while the sudden sun Fled to his home. Afar the Matterhorn Reared a gaunt pinnacle athwart the bank, Where towered behind it one vast pillar of cloud To thrice its height. dome On which we stood, all weary of the way, And marked the east awaken into scorn, And rush upon us. Then we set our teeth To force a dangerous passage, and essayed The steep slope not in vain. We pushed our way Slowly and careworn down the icy ridge, Hewing with ponderous strokes the riven ice In little Hakes and chips, and now again Encountered strange and fearsome sentinels, Behold the ice-clad 1 The first guideless traverse of this mountain, one of the peaks of the Bernese Oberland. Gray pinnacles of lightning-riven rock fashioned of fire and night. We clomb adown Fantastic cliffs of gnarled stone, and saw The vivid lightning flare in purple robes Of flame along the ridge, and even heard Its terrible crackle, “nid the sullen rear Of answering thunder. Now the driven hail Beat on our faces, while we strove to fling Aloft the axe of forged stecl, encased In glittering ice, and smite unceasingly On the unyielding slope ofiec, as black As those most imminent ghosts of Satan’s frown That shut us out from heaven, while the snow Kroze on our cheeks. the field Where precipice and overwhelming rock, Avalanche, crag, leap threugh the dazzled air To pile their mass in one Lethean plain Of undulations of rolled billowy snow Rent, seamed, and scarred with wound on jagged wound, Thus then we gained Blue-rushing to the vague expanse below Of the unknown secrecies of mountain song. Dragging behind us beautiful weary limbs, We turned snow-blinded eyes towards the pass ! That shot a jasper wall above the mist Into the Jightning-kindled firmament, Behind whose battlements a shelter? lay, Rude-built. of pine, whose parents in the storm Of some vast avalanche were swept away Into the valley. Thither we hasted on, And there, as night stretched out a broken wing Torn by the thunder and the bitter strife Of warring flames and tempest’s wrath, we came And flung ourselves within, and laid us down At last to sleep ; and Sleep, a veinéd shape Of naked stateliness, came down to us, And tenderly stooped down, and kissed our brows. 1 The Ménchjoch. 2 The Berglihiitte.