Classic Poem

" There! — see you not upon the face
Of yonder far and dizzy height
A something with slow-moving pace,
Now faintly seen, now lost to sight?
And now again, with downward spring,
As if supported by a wing,
It drops, then scarcely seems to crawl
Along the smooth and shining wall.
Is it a bird? or beast whose lair
Is hid within some cavern there?
Or some adventurer who hath striven
To scale that Babel wall to heaven?
In sooth, methinks, there never yawned
A passage to the world beyond
Of shorter access than now lies
Around that climber in the skies. "

Then spake the guide: —
" Unless I err,
There is but one adventurer
From Basle unto Geneva's lake,
From Neufchatel to Splügen pass,
Of all who freely scale the brow
Of ice that crowns the Mer-de-glace,
Or climbs the slippery Rosenlau,
Who dares that dreadful path to take.
Not him who sprang from ridge to ridge,
And passed us on the Devil's Bridge,
And told you all that perilous tale
Which made your rosy cheeks grow pale.
Nor him who in the Grimsel sang
Among his fellows of the chase,
Until the laughing rafters rang
And scared all slumber from the place;
Or, if the weary traveller slept,
Through all his dream the chamois swept
There never yet was hunter born
So fierce of soul, so lithe of limb,
So fearless on the mountain's rim,
As Herman of the Wetterhorn.
He robbed the Jungfrau of her fame,
And put the chamois' flight to shame;
He takes the wild crag by the brow,
As boatman might his shallop-prow.
The avalance he loves to dare,
To shout amid the wild uproar
Until the thundering vale is full, —
Then stands upon the ruins there,
Like some brave Spanish matadore
With foot upon the fallen bull!
" If all goes well as it should go,
Two toiling hours of steady pace
Must bring us to the ribs of snow
That lie around the broken base
Of that far height, and one hour more
Should find us at the convent door;
And there perchance will Herman be,
His shoulder laden with chamois,
His heart a mountain well of glee,
His voice an alpine gust of joy. "

Two hours they toiled with steady pace,
And they had gained that rocky base.
But when the winding line had earned
A jutting crag and partly turned,
A sharp and sudden rifle-crack
Broke through the thin and icy air,
Jarring the frozen silence there,
And rattled down the steep hill-side;
But ere the snow-cliffs gave it back,
A wounded chamois in their track
Rolled bleeding, and there died!
The startled rider checked his rein;
And the pedestrian stayed his pace:
With looks of wonder or of pain
Each stared into the other's face.
And when the maid's first shock of fear
In gentle tremblings passed away,
Her dark eye glistening with a tear,
She gazed where the dead creature lay.

The graceful head, — the slender horns, —
The eyes which Death seemed scarce to dull,
So wildly sad, — so beautiful!
The polished hoofs, — the shining form, —
The limbs that had outsped the storm,
Thrilled her with wonder and with wo,
Until she would have given a part
Of the dear life-blood of her heart
To wake once more that gentle eye
And bid the eagle's rival fly
Unto his native crags of snow.

Before their wonder all had passed
A voice came down the rising blast, —
A voice that gayly soared and fell
Along the wild winds' wandering swell;
A carol like a flying bird's —
Faint were the notes at first, and then
The sounds ran eddying into words
That sang of mirth and Meyringen.