Once upon a spotless autumn day I was sketching there belated spring flowers next the snow. All was still, save for the peek-peek of some small linnet-like mountain bird among the boulders by the glacier-stream, and the occasional shrill alarm-cry of marmots disturbed whilst collecting grass for making tight and snug their prospective winter quarters sounds which, with their echoes, merely accentuated the prevailing silence. Then of a sudden the air was rent as if by a terrible explosion, and, looking up, I saw tons upon tons of sea-green ice split from the glacier and come roaring, hurtling down over the rock-wall. The noise for a while was deafening. Then all once again was silent, with nothing to tell of the giant uproar but the amethyst-blue scar above the precipice. Never in my life have I felt solitude so acutely; never have I felt so insignificant and paltry. Not far off among the edelweiss, I knew, was a shepherd and his flock of three or four hundred sheep; but in the presence of this devastating force of “inert” nature, solitude and loneliness were mine in all their belittling power.
“I am just now, as you may see,
Very unfit to put so strange a thought
In an intelligible dress of words;
But take it as my trust.”
FOOTNOTES
[1] See Lausanne in this series.
[2] Champéry 1049 metres; Villars 1256 metres.