Poems
THEME/S
The Alps soar to lone pinnacles of light,
Intensities of isolated trance,
An upward rush of separate sanctities
The mind can cherish in its narrow sight
And worship with its flitting wonderment.
But O the thought-bewildering wall of white
Outrunning the extremes of human gaze,
Vanishing to the right, fading to the left
And lifting a universe of dreaming ice,
A vast virginity with no gap in God
To let the world's familiar face yearn through—
All life plucked from its level loiterings
To one dense danger of divinity,
A sheer leap everywhere of soul made rock
Of rapture unperturbable by time—
The Himalaya's immense epiphany!
No thin melodic themes drawn to high hush
Which yet weighs never the ineffable on earth's ear
Nor wipes out the earth's eye with infinite blank:
Here an all-instrumental harmony
Sweeps to a multitudinous peace beyond—
Both ear and eye numb with eternal snow,
Stunned by an adamant absolute of height,
Until new senses burst from the unknown—
A vision of the farthest truth above,
Around, below: a hearing of heaven's heart
Behind each pulse-throb of mortality!
Too often have we adored the Alpine mood,
Submitted to the cleavage between crests,
Followed the peak of love or peak of power
Or wisdom rising to a silver summit.
The uttermost of each hangs still ungrasped:
Life is a breakless cry: without the whole
Self towering up in massive mystic sleep
Page 64
How shall it wear the crown of the endless sky?. ..
O wanderer soul, drunkard of distances,
Perfection's pilgrim, touch with votive brow
The foot of the one transcendent Himalaya!
8-6-48
Page 65
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