Mont Blanc: Lines Written In The Vale Of Chamouni Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDBBEDEFFCA GHHGIEJAKLJKMNHNHMLJ LOMPMMMPOMQQMAMQRA SFFASANAMNMAGMGMTMEE AAGUAVWUXAXAYYAA MAZZMNONA2AOAOAA2MNM MFAFMLAAAIEOMAB2MAC2 MC2AFFMRA RMD2MORLOD2E2MMME2AA AAI | A |
The everlasting universe of things | B |
Flows through the mind and rolls its rapid waves | C |
Now dark now glittering now reflecting gloom | D |
Now lending splendour where from secret springs | B |
The source of human thought its tribute brings | B |
Of waters with a sound but half its own | E |
Such as a feeble brook will oft assume | D |
In the wild woods among the mountains lone | E |
Where waterfalls around it leap for ever | F |
Where woods and winds contend and a vast river | F |
Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves | C |
II | A |
- | |
Thus thou Ravine of Arve dark deep Ravine | G |
Thou many colour'd many voiced vale | H |
Over whose pines and crags and caverns sail | H |
Fast cloud shadows and sunbeams awful scene | G |
Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down | I |
From the ice gulfs that gird his secret throne | E |
Bursting through these dark mountains like the flame | J |
Of lightning through the tempest thou dost lie | A |
Thy giant brood of pines around thee clinging | K |
Children of elder time in whose devotion | L |
The chainless winds still come and ever came | J |
To drink their odours and their mighty swinging | K |
To hear an old and solemn harmony | M |
Thine earthly rainbows stretch'd across the sweep | N |
Of the aethereal waterfall whose veil | H |
Robes some unsculptur'd image the strange sleep | N |
Which when the voices of the desert fail | H |
Wraps all in its own deep eternity | M |
Thy caverns echoing to the Arve's commotion | L |
A loud lone sound no other sound can tame | J |
Thou art pervaded with that ceaseless motion | L |
Thou art the path of that unresting sound | O |
Dizzy Ravine and when I gaze on thee | M |
I seem as in a trance sublime and strange | P |
To muse on my own separate fantasy | M |
My own my human mind which passively | M |
Now renders and receives fast influencings | M |
Holding an unremitting interchange | P |
With the clear universe of things around | O |
One legion of wild thoughts whose wandering wings | M |
Now float above thy darkness and now rest | Q |
Where that or thou art no unbidden guest | Q |
In the still cave of the witch Poesy | M |
Seeking among the shadows that pass by | A |
Ghosts of all things that are some shade of thee | M |
Some phantom some faint image till the breast | Q |
From which they fled recalls them thou art there | R |
III | A |
- | |
Some say that gleams of a remoter world | S |
Visit the soul in sleep that death is slumber | F |
And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber | F |
Of those who wake and live I look on high | A |
Has some unknown omnipotence unfurl'd | S |
The veil of life and death or do I lie | A |
In dream and does the mightier world of sleep | N |
Spread far around and inaccessibly | A |
Its circles For the very spirit fails | M |
Driven like a homeless cloud from steep to steep | N |
That vanishes among the viewless gales | M |
Far far above piercing the infinite sky | A |
Mont Blanc appears still snowy and serene | G |
Its subject mountains their unearthly forms | M |
Pile around it ice and rock broad vales between | G |
Of frozen floods unfathomable deeps | M |
Blue as the overhanging heaven that spread | T |
And wind among the accumulated steeps | M |
A desert peopled by the storms alone | E |
Save when the eagle brings some hunter's bone | E |
And the wolf tracks her there how hideously | A |
Its shapes are heap'd around rude bare and high | A |
Ghastly and scarr'd and riven Is this the scene | G |
Where the old Earthquake daemon taught her young | U |
Ruin Were these their toys or did a sea | A |
Of fire envelop once this silent snow | V |
None can reply all seems eternal now | W |
The wilderness has a mysterious tongue | U |
Which teaches awful doubt or faith so mild | X |
So solemn so serene that man may be | A |
But for such faith with Nature reconcil'd | X |
Thou hast a voice great Mountain to repeal | A |
Large codes of fraud and woe not understood | Y |
By all but which the wise and great and good | Y |
Interpret or make felt or deeply feel | A |
IV | A |
- | |
The fields the lakes the forests and the streams | M |
Ocean and all the living things that dwell | A |
Within the daedal earth lightning and rain | Z |
Earthquake and fiery flood and hurricane | Z |
The torpor of the year when feeble dreams | M |
Visit the hidden buds or dreamless sleep | N |
Holds every future leaf and flower the bound | O |
With which from that detested trance they leap | N |
The works and ways of man their death and birth | A2 |
And that of him and all that his may be | A |
All things that move and breathe with toil and sound | O |
Are born and die revolve subside and swell | A |
Power dwells apart in its tranquillity | O |
Remote serene and inaccessible | A |
And this the naked countenance of earth | A2 |
On which I gaze even these primeval mountains | M |
Teach the adverting mind The glaciers creep | N |
Like snakes that watch their prey from their far fountains | M |
Slow rolling on there many a precipice | M |
Frost and the Sun in scorn of mortal power | F |
Have pil'd dome pyramid and pinnacle | A |
A city of death distinct with many a tower | F |
And wall impregnable of beaming ice | M |
Yet not a city but a flood of ruin | L |
Is there that from the boundaries of the sky | A |
Rolls its perpetual stream vast pines are strewing | A |
Its destin'd path or in the mangled soil | A |
Branchless and shatter'd stand the rocks drawn down | I |
From yon remotest waste have overthrown | E |
The limits of the dead and living world | O |
Never to be reclaim'd The dwelling place | M |
Of insects beasts and birds becomes its spoil | A |
Their food and their retreat for ever gone | B2 |
So much of life and joy is lost The race | M |
Of man flies far in dread his work and dwelling | A |
Vanish like smoke before the tempest's stream | C2 |
And their place is not known Below vast caves | M |
Shine in the rushing torrents' restless gleam | C2 |
Which from those secret chasms in tumult welling | A |
Meet in the vale and one majestic River | F |
The breath and blood of distant lands for ever | F |
Rolls its loud waters to the ocean waves | M |
Breathes its swift vapours to the circling air | R |
V | A |
- | |
- | |
Mont Blanc yet gleams on high the power is there | R |
The still and solemn power of many sights | M |
And many sounds and much of life and death | D2 |
In the calm darkness of the moonless nights | M |
In the lone glare of day the snows descend | O |
Upon that Mountain none beholds them there | R |
Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun | L |
Or the star beams dart through them Winds contend | O |
Silently there and heap the snow with breath | D2 |
Rapid and strong but silently Its home | E2 |
The voiceless lightning in these solitudes | M |
Keeps innocently and like vapour broods | M |
Over the snow The secret Strength of things | M |
Which governs thought and to the infinite dome | E2 |
Of Heaven is as a law inhabits thee | A |
And what were thou and earth and stars and sea | A |
If to the human mind's imaginings | A |
Silence and solitude were vacancy | A |
Percy Bysshe Shelley
(1)
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