Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 12.djvu/35

Rh Bevay and the Castle of Chillon; the mountains, which shut out from our view the entrance into Valais, and extended as far as the lake; from thence the borders of Savoy, Evian, Repaille, and Tonon, with a sprinkling of villages and farmhouses between them. At last Geneva stood clear from the mist; but beyond, and toward the south, in the neighbourhood of Monte Credo and Monte Vauche, it still hung immovable. When the eye turned to the left, it caught sight of the whole of the lowlands from Lausanne, as far as Solothurn, covered with a light halo. The nearer mountains and heights, and every spot that had a white house on it, could be closely distinguished. The guides pointed out a glimmering, which they said was the Castle of Chauvan, which lies to the left of the Neuberger-See. We were just able to guess whereabouts it lay, but could not distinguish it through the bluish haze. There are no words to express the grandeur and beauty of this view. At the moment every one is scarcely conscious of what he sees: one does but recall the names and sites of well-known cities and localities, to rejoice in a vague conjecture that he recognises them in certain white spots which strike his eye in the prospect before him.

And then the line of ghttering glaciers was continually drawing the eye back again to the mountains. The sun made his way toward the west, and lighted up their great flat surfaces, which were turned toward us. How beautifully before them rose from above the snow the variegated rows of black rocks!—teeth, towers, walls; wild, vast, inaccessible vestibules!—and seeming to stand there in the free air in the first purity and freshness of their manifold variety. Man gives up at once all pretensions to the infinite, while he here feels that neither with thought nor vision is he equal to the finite.

Before us we saw a fruitful and populous plain.