Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
France: Vols. IX–X. 1876–79. | | | | Chartreuse, La Grande | | The Grande Chartreuse | | William Wordsworth (1770–1850) |
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AND now, emerging from the forest’s gloom, | |
| I greet thee, Chartreuse, while I mourn thy doom | |
| Whither is fled that power whose frown severe | |
| Awed sober Reason till she crouched in fear? | |
| That silence, once in deathlike fetters bound, | 5 |
| Chains that were loosened only by the sound | |
| Of holy rites chanted in measured round? | |
| The voice of blasphemy the fane alarms, | |
| The cloister startles at the gleam of arms. | |
| The thundering tube the aged angler hears, | 10 |
| Bent o’er the groaning flood that sweeps away his tears. | |
| Cloud-piercing pine-trees nod their troubled heads, | |
| Spires, rocks, and lawns a browner night o’erspreads; | |
| Strong terror checks the female peasant’s sighs, | |
| And start the astonished shades at female eyes. | 15 |
| From Bruno’s forest screams the affrighted jay, | |
| And slow the insulted eagle wheels away. | |
| A viewless flight of laughing demons mock | |
| The cross by angels planted on the aerial rock. | |
| The parting genius sighs with hollow breath | 20 |
| Along the mystic streams of life and death. | |
| Swelling the outcry dull, that long resounds | |
| Portentous through her old woods’ trackless bounds, | |
| Vallombre, mid her falling fanes, deplores, | |
| Forever broke, the Sabbath of her bowers. * * * * * | 25 | | | |
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