Page:History of a Six Weeks Tour.djvu/186



Thus thou, Ravine of Arve—dark, deep Ravine— Thou many-colored, many-voiced vale, Over whose pines, and crags, and caverns sail Fast cloud shadows and sunbeams: awful scene, Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down From the ice gulphs that gird his secret throne, Bursting through these dark mountains like the flame Of lightning thro' the tempest;—thou dost lie, Thy giant brood of pines around thee clinging, Children of elder time, in whose devotion The chainless winds still come and ever came To drink their odours, and their mighty swinging To hear—an old and solemn harmony; Thine earthly rainbows stretched across the sweep Of the ethereal waterfall, whose veil Robes some unsculptured image; the strange sleep Which when the voices of the desart fail