"Which to the wilderness drove out
Our life, to Alpine snow,
And palsied all our word with doubt,
And all our work with woe—
"What still of strength is left, employ
That end to help attain:
One common wave of thought and joy
Lifting mankind again!"
—The vision ended. I awoke
As out of sleep, and no
Voice moved;—only the torrent broke
The silence, far below.
Soft darkness on the turf did lie.
Solemn, o'er hut and wood,
In the yet star-sown nightly sky,
The peak of Jaman stood.
Still in my soul the voice I heard
Of Obermann!—--away
I turned; by some vague impulse stirr'd,
Along the rocks of Naye
Past Sonchaud's piny flanks I gaze
And the blanch'd summit bare
Of Malatrait, to where in haze
The Valais opens fair,
And the domed Velan, with his snows,
Behind the upcrowding hills,
Doth all the heavenly opening close
Which the Rhone's murmur fills;—
And glorious there, without a sound,
Across the glimmering lake,
High in the Valais-depth profound,
I saw the morning break.