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(From The Golden Legend)
PRINCE HENRY THIS is the highest point. Two ways the rivers | |
| Leap down to different seas, and as they roll | |
| Grow deep and still, and their majestic presence | |
| Becomes a benefaction to the towns | |
| They visit, wandering silently among them, | 5 |
| Like patriarchs old among their shining tents. | |
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ELSIE How bleak and bare it is! Nothing but mosses | |
Grow on these rocks.
PRINCE HENRY Yet are they not forgotten; | |
| Beneficent Nature sends the mists to feed them. | |
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ELSIE See yonder little cloud, that, borne aloft | 10 |
| So tenderly by the wind, floats fast away | |
| Over the snowy peaks! It seems to me | |
| The body of St. Catherine, borne by angels! | |
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PRINCE HENRY Thou art St. Catherine, and invisible angels | |
| Bear thee across these chasms and precipices, | 15 |
| Lest thou shouldst dash thy feet against a stone! | |
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ELSIE Would I were borne unto my grave, as she was, | |
| Upon angelic shoulders! Even now | |
| I seem uplifted by them, light as air! | |
What sound is that?
PRINCE HENRY The tumbling avalanches! | 20 |
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ELSIE How awful, yet how beautiful!
PRINCE HENRY These are | |
| The voices of the mountains! Thus they ope | |
| Their snowy lips, and speak unto each other, | |
| In the primeval language, lost to man. | |
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ELSIE What land is this that spreads itself beneath us? | 25 |
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PRINCE HENRY Italy! Italy!
ELSIE Land of the Madonna! | |
| How beautiful it is! It seems a garden | |
| Of Paradise! | |
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