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I.
THE MOTION OF THE MISTS
HERE by the sunless lake there is no air, | |
| Yet with how ceaseless motion, like a shower | |
| Flowing and fading, do the high mists lower | |
| Amid the gorges of the mountains bare. | |
| Some weary breathing never ceases there,— | 5 |
| The barren peaks can feel it hour by hour; | |
| The purple depths are darkened by its power; | |
| A soundless breath, a trouble all things share | |
| That feel it come and go. See! onward swim | |
| The ghostly mists, from silent land to land, | 10 |
| From gulf to gulf; now the whole air grows dim,— | |
| Like living men, darkling a space, they stand. | |
| But lo! a sunbeam, like the cherubim, | |
| Scatters them onward with a flaming brand. | |
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II.
CORUISK
I THINK this is the very stillest place | 15 |
| On all God’s earth, and yet no rest is here. | |
| The vapors mirrored in the black loch’s face | |
| Drift on like frantic shapes and disappear; | |
| A never-ceasing murmur in mine ear | |
| Tells me of waters wild that flow and flow. | 20 |
| There is no rest at all afar or near, | |
| Only a sense of things that moan and go. | |
| And lo! the still small life these limbs contain | |
| I feel flows on like those, restless and proud; | |
| Before that breathing naught within my brain | 25 |
| Pauses, but all drifts on like mist and cloud; | |
| Only the bald peaks and the stones remain, | |
| Frozen before thee, desolate and bowed. | |
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III.
THE HILLS ON THEIR THRONES
GHOSTLY and livid, robed with shadow, see! | |
| Each mighty mountain silent on its throne, | 30 |
| From foot to scalp one stretch of livid stone, | |
| Without one gleam of grass or greenery. | |
| Silent they take the immutable decree,— | |
| Darkness or sunlight come,—they do not stir; | |
| Each bare brow, lifted desolately free, | 35 |
| Keepeth the silence of a death-chamber. | |
| Silent they watch each other until doom; | |
| They see each other’s phantoms come and go, | |
| Yet stir not. Now the stormy hour brings gloom, | |
| Now all things grow confused and black below, | 40 |
| Specific through the cloudy drift they loom, | |
| And each accepts his individual woe. | |
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IV.
KING BLAABHEIN
MONARCH of these is Blaabhein. On his height | |
| The lightning and the snow sleep side by side, | |
| Like snake and lamb; he waiteth in a white | 45 |
| And wintry consecration. All his pride | |
| Is husht this dimly gleaming autumn day,— | |
| He broodeth o’er the things he hath beheld,— | |
| Beneath his feet the rains crawl still and gray, | |
| Like phantoms of the mighty men of eld. | 50 |
| A quiet awe the dreadful heights doth fill, | |
| The high clouds pause and brood above their king; | |
| The torrent murmurs gently as a rill; | |
| Softly and low the winds are murmuring: | |
| A small black speck above the snow, how still | 55 |
| Hovers the eagle, with no stir of wing! | |
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V.
BLAABHEIN IN THE MISTS
WATCH but a moment,—all is changed! A moan | |
| Breaketh the beauty of that noonday dream; | |
| The hoary Titan darkens on his throne, | |
| And with an indistinct and senile scream | 60 |
| Gazes at the wild rains as past they stream, | |
| Through vaporous air wild-blowing on his brow; | |
| All black, from scalp to base there is no gleam, | |
| Even his silent snows are faded now. | |
| Watch yet!—and yet!—Behold, and all is done,— | 65 |
| ’T was but the shallow shapes that come and go, | |
| Troubling the mimic picture in the eye. | |
| Still and untroubled sits the kingly one. | |
| Yonder the eagle floats,—there sleeps the snow | |
| Against the pale green of the cloudless sky. | 70 |
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