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Title: Chamouny; The Hour Before Sunrise - A Hymn
Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge [
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Hast thou a charm to stay the morning star
In his steep course--so long he seems to pause
On thy bald awful head, O Chamouny!
The Arvè and Arveiron at thy base
Eave ceaselessly; but thou, dread mountain form,
Resist from forth thy silent sea of pines
How silently! Around thee, and above,
Deep is the sky, and black: transpicuous, deep,
An ebon mass! Methinks thou piercest it
As with a wedge! But when I look again,
It seems thy own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity.
O dread and silent form! I gaz'd upon thee,
Till thou, still present to my bodily eye,
Did'st vanish from my thought. Entranc'd in pray'r,
I worshipp'd the INVISIBLE alone.
Yet thou, meantime, wast working on my soul,
E'en like some deep enchanting melody,
So sweet, we know not, we are list'ning to it.
But I awoke, and with a busier mind,
And active will self-conscious, offer now
Not, as before, involuntary pray'r
And passive adoration!--
Hand and voice,
Awake, awake! and thou, my heart, awake!
Awake ye rocks! Ye forest pines, awake!
Green fields, and icy cliffs! All join my hymn!
And thou, O silent mountain, sole and bare,
O blacker, than the darkness, all the night,
And visited, all night, by troops of stars,
Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink--
Companion of the morning star at dawn,
Thyself Earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Co-herald! Wake, O wake, and utter praise!
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth?
Who fill'd thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee father of perpetual streams?
And you, ye five wild torrents, fiercely glad,
Who call'd you forth from Night and utter Death?
From darkness let you loose, and icy dens,
Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks
For ever shatter'd, and the same for ever!
Who gave you your invulnerable life,
Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
Unceasing thunder, and eternal foam!
And who commanded, and the silence came--
'Here shall the billows stiffen, and have rest?'
Ye ice-falls! ye that from yon dizzy heights
Adown enormous ravines steeply slope,
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopp'd at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!
Who made you glorious, as the gates of Heav'n,
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who with lovely flow'rs
Of living blue spread garlands at your feet?
GOD! GOD! The torrents like a shout of nations,
Utter! The ice-plain bursts, and answers GOD!
GOD, sing the meadow-streams with gladsome voice,
And pine groves with their soft, and soul-like sound,
The silent snow-mass, loos'ning, thunders GOD!
Ye dreadless flow'rs! that fringe th' eternal frost!
Ye wild goats, bounding by the eagle's nest!
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain blast!
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
Ye signs and wonders of the element,
Utter forth, GOD! and fill the hills with praise!
And thou, O silent Form, alone and bare,
Whom, as I lift again my head bow'd low
In adoration, I again behold,
And to thy summit upward from thy base
Sweep slowly with dim eyes suffus'd by tears,
Awake, thou mountain form! rise, like a cloud!
Rise, like a cloud of incense, from the earth!
Thou kingly spirit thron'd among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from Earth to Heav'n--
Great hierarch, tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell the rising sun,
Earth with her thousand voices calls on God!
[The end]
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem: Chamouny; The Hour Before Sunrise - A Hymn
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