Fest. Puritatis.
XV.
Far down the bird may sing of love;
The honey-bearing blossom blow:
But hail, ye hills that rise above
The limit of perpetual snow!
O Alpine City, with thy walls
Of rock eterne and spires of ice,
Where torrent still to torrent calls,
And precipice to precipice;—
How like that holier City thou,
The heavenly Salem's earthly porch,
Which rears among the stars her brow,
And plants firm feet on earth—the Church!
"Decaying, ne'er to be decayed,"
Her woods, like thine, renew their youth:
Her streams, in rocky arms embayed,
Are clear as virtue, strong as truth.
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At times the lake may burst its dam;
Black pine and rock the valley strew;
But o'er the ruin soon the lamb
Its flowery pasture crops anew.
She, too, in regions near the sky
Up-piles her cloistered snows, and thence
Diffuses gales of purity
O'er fields of consecrated sense.
On those still heights a love-light glows
The plains from them alone receive;—
Not all the Lily! There thy Rose,
O Mary, triumphs, morn and eve!
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XVI.
Cloud-piercing Mountains! Chance and Change
More high than you their thrones advance.
Self-vanquished Nature's rockiest range
Gives way before them like the trance
Of one that wakes. From morn to eve
Through fissured clefts her mists make way;
At Night's cold touch they freeze, and cleave
Her crags; and, with a Titan's sway,
Flake off and peel the rotting rocks,
And heap the glacier tide below
With isles of sand and floating blocks,
As leaves on streams when tempests blow.
Lo, thus the great decree all-just,
O Earth, thy mountains hear; and learn
From fire and frost its import—"dust
Thou art; and shalt to dust return."
He only is Who ever was;
The All-measuring Mind; the Will Supreme.
Rocks, mountains, worlds, like bubbles pass:
God is; the things not God but seem.