178
The Avalanche.
Alone with God we were—far, far above
The narrow sympathies of valley life,
'Mid those vast heights, where nature's sterner front
Makes play-ground for the elements unchained!
How grey the shadows on the mountain fall,
Dashed with a tint of purple from the sun,
Whose palette heaped with broken colours lay
In gorgeous tints upon the hoary rocks
Hurled down by avalanche, or mountain slide.
E'en bird, nor insect, had mistook their way
From shelters safe below in sunlight wrapt,
To flutter wing in frosty Alpine breeze—
Naught but wild flowers smiled upon our path;
The Soldanella raised her pale fringed cheek
From some more sheltered cliff, or gentian blue
Clustered 'mid tufted ferns, that waved their crests
Like warriors' plumes o'er icy fields of Death.
The path grew steeper, and more keen the air,
As into regions of eternal snows,
Our upward pathway tortuously wound.
At length we pause, dismount, on ice-crust stand
Beside a grave, a traveller's lonely grave;
Down twenty feet of snow and treacherous ice,
Lurked this dark sepulchre in shiv'ring drifts.
No mourner's tear had wet the new-made turf,
And bid the golden flow'r of Hope to bloom,
The narrow sympathies of valley life,
'Mid those vast heights, where nature's sterner front
Makes play-ground for the elements unchained!
How grey the shadows on the mountain fall,
Dashed with a tint of purple from the sun,
Whose palette heaped with broken colours lay
In gorgeous tints upon the hoary rocks
Hurled down by avalanche, or mountain slide.
E'en bird, nor insect, had mistook their way
From shelters safe below in sunlight wrapt,
To flutter wing in frosty Alpine breeze—
Naught but wild flowers smiled upon our path;
The Soldanella raised her pale fringed cheek
From some more sheltered cliff, or gentian blue
Clustered 'mid tufted ferns, that waved their crests
Like warriors' plumes o'er icy fields of Death.
The path grew steeper, and more keen the air,
As into regions of eternal snows,
Our upward pathway tortuously wound.
At length we pause, dismount, on ice-crust stand
Beside a grave, a traveller's lonely grave;
Down twenty feet of snow and treacherous ice,
Lurked this dark sepulchre in shiv'ring drifts.
No mourner's tear had wet the new-made turf,
And bid the golden flow'r of Hope to bloom,
