Part 1 (2/2)

Here in the valley where rushes a torrent, Constant and cold, be it summer or winter, A village lies hid and hither the climbers, Strangely alike in their eager impatience, Wearing the look of enwrapped expectation, Pause ere they start on their perilous journey.

Hemming me round, the implacable mountains Shut out the world and confine me in durance, Bending my soul to the yoke of their bondage, Dwarfing my self and my little emotions, Waking desire to escape limitations And barriers imposed by narrow horizons.

Rugged, majestic, they tower above me, As lonely and pensive I gaze in the torrent, Wondering now at the summons insistent, No longer in dreams and rovings of fancy, But weighted with impulse, defying resistance, Rousing unrest like a spirit of evil.

So, as I linger awhile in the village, Completely I know each day brings me nearer To what lies beyond, in the regions of silence.

Now it is over. The lights of the village, The children at play, the clink from the smithy, The gurgle and rush of the hurrying torrent, The rattle of wheels, the tinkle of cowbells, The inn's open window whence converse in fragments Floats out with the odours of beer and tobacco, All welcome me back with familiar voices.

Here time moves onward with rhythmic precision: Breakfast and dinner, and bed for the darkness, With Sunday to part one week from another: Spring time and winter, the snow and the suns.h.i.+ne, And sooner or later a cross in the churchyard.

Time lacks proportion away in the mountains.

What is a day or an hour or a lifetime Gauged by the ebb and the flow of the ages Shown in the tidemarks on crags prehistoric?

If, as men say, time is measured by heartbeats, I wandered through years of vivid emotions.

Pelion and Ossa, by arrogant t.i.tans Profanely uplifted to challenge Olympus, Repeated themselves in the blueness above me.

Sunsets and dawns such as glowed on the marshes, Silurian haunts of the early creation, Long ere the age of humanity's advent, Gleamed through the vapours and red exhalations Rising from bottomless pits to encolour Weirdly the matrix, volcanic, primeval, Riven and torn in the birth-throes of Cosmos.

Slippery ledges uneven and narrow, Through rarefied air that maddens the pulses, Treacherous footpaths inviting destruction, Where fear in the heart disorders the senses.

Vertiginate chasms, abysmal, terrific, Unfathomed and sheer with never a foothold, Compelling the gaze with cold fascination.

Stretches of billowy acres of whiteness Dimming the eyes with their endless expanses; Ridges upstanding in ice walls cemented By glacial pressure of slow-moving ma.s.ses.

Caverns with ice shapes, blue-tinted, translucent: Columns and altars and figures fantastic, Imagined in dreams or pictured in fever, Softly illumed by the moonlight's reflection.

There is the haunt of the evil ice maidens, The servants of Death, who lure with their beauty, Who bathe in the stream of the glacier water, The glacial water that flows through the caverns, Silent and deep as the river of Lethe.

These memories hold me. I live in a fever.

The air that I breathe, the influence round me Are charged with a strange and volatile essence That throbs in my veins and quickens my breathing.

Held by the mountains, I languish in bondage Under the masterful sway of their presence.

Restless though weary I dream of their perils, Slipping down chasms with death at the bottom, Or over the desolate ice fields I wander, Hopeless, forgotten and lost in the snowdrifts, Wandering ever past hope of redemption.

Sometimes I swing with a pendulum's measure, Fitfully swayed by the wind o'er a chasm That gapes far below, relentless and cruel, Conscious of all in the terrible moments That pa.s.s till I drop to the doom that is waiting Far in the depths of the yawning creva.s.ses, And wake at the instant supreme of destruction.

To-morrow at dawn I fly from the village Back to the peace of the waters of Leman.

Gone, gone at last, is the morbid obsession!

Gone to the shade in the regions of Limbo.

Far, far away, o'er the waters of Leman, Mistily outlined and faint in the distance, Threatening no longer, the dream-haunted mountains Lazily whisper of rest and contentment.

Softly the plash of the glittering fountain Falls on the night with the scent of mimosa, Mingled with polyglot phrases and laughter, Marking the pause 'twixt a waltz and mazurka.

Soft are the lamps in the Kursaal rotunda Lighting discreetly the hall of lost footsteps Whose gleaming mosaics are painted with garlands, Blossoms exotic, luxuriant, languid, Red as the souls of the people about them, Hinting at pa.s.sions through crimson and purple, Fitting the vogue of this temple of pleasure.

On a divan in the hall where the idlers Promenade slowly, in converse together, I sit all alone in calm contemplation, Hearing the orchestra faint in the distance And the croupier's voice from his chamber seductive, Parrot-like crying in stale iteration, Summons and challenge across the green table.

Keen-eyed old gamesters who prowl round the players, Seeking a pigeon to pluck at their leisure: Black-whiskered barons with blurred reputations Smirking at B. and his girls from Chicago: Swaggering captains at best detrimental: A country-bred youth just come to a fortune, Trying in vain to conceal his amazement: Couples awaiting the Absolute's fiat, Now in pursuit of a flying illusion: Hebrews from Frankfort and bankers from Paris Chatting to ladies resplendent in diamonds; A burgess of London whose wife says: ”Disgraceful,”

But lingers to study Parisian fas.h.i.+ons: Gamblers inveterate bent to a system, Silent, unheeding, absorbed in their figures: Well-groomed young fellows, light-hearted and careless, Come for the dance and the fun of flirtation, Bright-eyed and merry, unconsciously breathing The poisonous air of sepulchres whited.

Perdita, watchful and guardedly smiling, Trying to lessen the distance between us, Wafts me a sign with a spray of verbena.

Is she an angel, a beast or a demon, Or spirit incarnate that onward is pa.s.sing To higher avatars by long transmigration?

Ah! how it warms one, this human deflection, This touch with familiar follies and foibles, After the limitless s.p.a.ce of the aeons, Out of the measure of time as we know it, Far in the distant and echoless ages, Austere, and untouched by our pa.s.sing emotions, Where I have wandered in lonely remoteness Under the pa.s.sionless spell of the mountains.

Cold and relentless, eternally lasting!

Silent inscriptions in cryptical cipher!

Unbroken record of time since creation, Whose secret is hid from human conception.

How small are the things humanity prizes, The feverish joys of pa.s.sion and pleasure, That pa.s.s like a dream to dusky oblivion!

How short is man's life compared with the ages That frown from the face of the mystical mountains, Far in the blue o'er the waters of Leman.

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