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Translated by Thomas Carlyle
BY the edge of the chasm is a slippery track, | |
| The torrent beneath, and the mist hanging o’er thee; | |
| The cliffs of the mountain, huge, rugged, and black, | |
| Are frowning like giants before thee; | |
| And, wouldst thou not waken the sleeping Lawine, | 5 |
| Walk silent and soft through the deadly ravine. | |
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| That bridge with its dizzying, perilous span | |
| Aloft o’er the gulf and its flood suspended, | |
| Think’st thou it was built by the art of man, | |
| By his hand that grim old arch was bended? | 10 |
| Far down in the jaws of the gloomy abyss | |
| The water is boiling and hissing,—forever will hiss. | |
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| That gate through the rocks is as darksome and drear | |
| As if to the region of shadows it carried: | |
| Yet enter! A sweet laughing landscape is here, | 15 |
| Where the Spring with the Autumn is married. | |
| From the world, with its sorrows and warfare and wail, | |
| O, could I but hide in this bright little vale! | |
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| Four rivers 1 rush down from on high, | |
| Their spring will be hidden forever; | 20 |
| Their course is to all the four points of the sky, | |
| To each point of the sky is a river; | |
| And fast as they start from their old mother’s feet, | |
| They dash forth, and no more will they meet. | |
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| Two pinnacles rise to the depths of the blue; | 25 |
| Aloft on their white summits glancing, | |
| Bedecked in their garments of golden dew, | |
| The clouds of the sky are dancing; | |
| There threading alone their lightsome maze, | |
| Uplifted apart from all mortals’ gaze. | 30 |
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| And high on her ever-enduring throne | |
| The queen of the mountains reposes; | |
| Her head serene and azure and lone | |
| A diamond crown encloses; | |
| The sun with his darts shoots round it keen and hot, | 35 |
| He gilds it always, he warms it not. | |
