The Peaks

Thou dread ambassador from Earth to Heaven,
Great Hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,

And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.

1389

Samuel Taylor Coleridge [1772-1834]

THE PEAKS

In the night

Gray, heavy clouds muffled the valleys,

And the peaks looked toward God alone.

"O Master, that movest the wind with a finger,
Humble, idle, futile peaks are we.

Grant that we may run swiftly across the world
To huddle in worship at Thy feet."

In the morning

A noise of men at work came through the clear blue miles, And the little black cities were apparent.

"O Master, that knowest the meaning of raindrops, Humble, idle, futile peaks are we.

Give voice to us, we pray, O Lord,

That we may sing Thy goodness to the sun."

In the evening

The far valleys were sprinkled with tiny lights.
"O Master,

Thou that knowest the value of kings and birds,
Thou hast made us humble, idle, futile peaks.
Thou only needest eternal patience;

We bow to Thy wisdom, O Lord-
Humble, idle, futile peaks."

In the night

Gray, heavy clouds muffled the valleys,
And the peaks looked toward God alone.

Stephen Crane [1870-1900]

KINCHINJUNGA

NEXT TO EVEREST HIGHEST OF MOUNTAINS

O WHITE priest of Eternity, around
Whose lofty summit veiling clouds arise

Of the earth's immemorial sacrifice

To Brahma, in whose breath all lives and dies;
O hierarch enrobed in timeless snows,
First-born of Asia, whose maternal throes
Seem changed now to a million human woes,
Holy thou art and still! Be so, nor sound
One sigh of all the mystery in thee found.

For in this world too much is overclear,
Immortal ministrant to many lands,
From whose ice altars flow, to fainting sands,
Rivers that each libation poured expands.
Too much is known, O Ganges-giving sire:
Thy people fathom life, and find it dire;
Thy people fathom death, and, in it, fire
To live again, though in Illusion's sphere,
Behold concealed as grief is in a tear.

Wherefore continue, still enshrined, thy rites,
Though dark Tibet, that dread ascetic, falls,
In strange austerity, whose trance appals,-
Before thee, and a suppliant on thee calls.
Continue still thy silence high and sure,
That something beyond fleeting may endure-
Something that shall forevermore allure
Imagination on to mystic flights
Wherein alone no wing of evil lights.

Yea, wrap thy awful gulfs and acolytes
Of lifted granite round with reachless snows.
Stand for eternity, while pilgrim rows
Of all the nations envy thy repose.
Ensheath thy swart sublimities, unscaled;
Be that alone on earth which has not failed;
Be that which never yet has yearned nor ailed,

To Meadows

But since primeval Power upreared thy heights
Has stood above all deaths and all delights.

And though thy loftier brother shall be king,
High-priest be thou to Brahma unrevealed,
While thy white sanctity forever sealed
In icy silence leaves desire congealed.
In ghostly ministrations to the sun,

And to the mendicant stars and the moon-nun,
Be holy still, till east to west has run,

And till no sacrificial suffering

On any shrine is left to tell life's sting.

Cale Young Rice [1872

1391

TO MEADOWS

YE have been fresh and green;

Ye have been filled with flowers;
And ye the walks have been

Where maids have spent their hours.

Ye have beheld how they

With wicker arks did come

To kiss and bear away

The richer cowslips home.

Ye've heard them sweetly sing,
And seen them in a round,
Each virgin, like a Spring,
With honeysuckles crowned.

But now we see none here

Whose silvery feet did tread,

And with dishevelled hair

Adorned this smoother mead.

Like unthrifts, having spent

Your stock, and needy grown,

Ye're left here to lament

Your poor estates, alone.

Robert Herrick [1591-1674]

THE CLOUD

I BRING fresh showers for the thirsting flowers
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 skiey 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,

The Cloud

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.

1393

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 depth 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 through 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 through 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.