Great Hierarch! tell thou the silent sky
And tell the stars and tell yon rising sun
Earth with her thousand voices praises God!’”
“I think it ends pretty feebly,” said I. “He compares Mont Blanc first with a vapoury cloud, then to a cloud of incense; then calls it a kingly Spirit throned, then a dread ambassador and then a Great Hierarch. What could be more mixed in its metaphors? But now let us take Shelley’s ‘Mont Blanc.’”
“I think it begins with a curious mixture,” said Ruth. “He says the everlasting universe of things flows through the mind, where from secret springs the source of human thought brings its tribute of waters with a sound but half its own such as a feeble brook assumes in the wild woods. How can the eternal universe of things rolling rapid waves diminish itself to a feeble brook? But it goes on:—
“‘In the wild woods, among the mountains lone,
Where waterfalls around it leap forever
Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river
Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves.’”
“It seems to me a hopeless mixture. The description of the Vale is better:—