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THERE is a valley dark and deep,
In whose wild depths no kindly sun hath shone,
Torn by a swirling torrent, never fringed
By fragrant flowers, dewy with the spray;
But from its ice-clad bosom upward rise
A score of envious cliffs, with seamed sides,
That cast the chilling shadow on the vale beneath
Of future avalanche. There, niggard earth
Takes to itself no waving robe of gold;
The scanty, fruitless plants that, timid, cling
About the rock-walled furrows, earthquake-cleft,
No kinder masters know than fire and frost.
A few steps more, and, round a jutting rock,
A fairy change! I see
A broad and sunny vale whose verdant slopes
A clustered village bear; and then a church,
And pastures, stretching up to forests dark
Of gloomy firs. But far above,
Far above a waved sea of snow,
On two stupendous flanks of time-worn rock,
Around which curl two living streams of ice,
A mountain rises, with one mighty leap,
Into the shimmering blue beyond; its crest,
Piercing through to purer air on high,
Grasps the blinding sunbeams from its peer
And flings them down below; the whole,
With jewelled crown of ice, a soaring shaft
Of crystallized eternity.
Eternity - But stay, - here comes a being,
Perhaps the guardian of this heavenly spot; -
O grisly vision! - what a sight! -
A mumbling, chattering ape with shambling step,
With twisted limbs, scarce covered by his rags,
While at his throat there hangs a swaying mass
Of quivering, gangrened flesh; a human form,
But worse than brule; that bestial, idiot leer
Doth bind him closer down to earth than yonder worm
That crawls upon a festering heap of mould.
I turn, and look upon the glorious scene
Above. - But yet, - the vital fire
Which heaved that noble pile above this earth
Has gone for aye, and cold and lifeless stands
The mighty peak; while that faint spark
That glimmers yet within the Cretin's breast,
Regenerated and reformed, shall live,
When yon vast rock shall lie, inert,
A mass of crumbling ruins on the plain.
S.
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