Mystic Mountains

The Alps soar to lone pinnacles of light,

Intensities of isolated trance,

An upward rush of separate sanctities

The mind can cherish in its narrow sight

And worship with its flitting wonderment.

But O the thought-bewildering wall of white

Outrunning the extremes of human gaze,

Vanishing to the right, fading to the left

And lifting a universe of dreaming ice,

A vast virginity with no gap in God

To let the world's familiar face yearn through—

All life plucked from its level loiterings

To one dense danger of divinity,

A sheer leap everywhere of soul made rock

Of rapture unperturbable by time—

The Himalaya's immense epiphany!

No thin melodic themes drawn to high hush

Which yet weighs never the ineffable on earth's ear

Nor wipes out the earth's eye with infinite blank:

Here an all-instrumental harmony

Sweeps to a multitudinous peace beyond—

Both ear and eye numb with eternal snow,

Stunned by an adamant absolute of height,

Until new senses burst from the unknown—

A vision of the farthest truth above,

Around, below: a hearing of heaven's heart

Behind each pulse-throb of mortality!

Too often have we adored the Alpine mood,

Submitted to the cleavage between crests,

Followed the peak of love or peak of power

Or wisdom rising to a silver summit.

The uttermost of each hangs still ungrasped:

Life is a breakless cry: without the whole

Self towering up in massive mystic sleep

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How shall it wear the crown of the endless sky?. ..

O wanderer soul, drunkard of distances,

Perfection's pilgrim, touch with votive brow

The foot of the one transcendent Himalaya!

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