O’er the crag’s headlong perpendicular,
And flings its lines of foaming light along
And to and fro, like the pale courser’s tail,
The giant steed, to be bestrode by Death
As told in the Apocalypse.”
The rainbow was suggested by the sun shining on the lower part of the torrent, “of all colors but principally purple and gold, the bow moving as you move.”
A day later he climbed to the top of the Wengern Mountain, five thousand feet above the valley, the view comprising the whole of the Jungfrau with all her glacier, then the Dent d’Argent, “shining like truth,” the two Eigers and the Wetterhorn. He says: “I heard the avalanches falling every five minutes nearly—as if God was pelting the Devil down from Heaven with snowballs. From where we stood, on the Wengern Alp, we had all these in view on one side: on the other, the clouds rose from the opposite valley, curling up perpendicular precipices like the foam of the Ocean of Hell during a Springtide—it was white and sulphury and immeasurably deep in appearance.” From the summit they “looked down upon a boiling sea of cloud, dashing against the crags on which we stood.”
The avalanches and sulphurous clouds of course became part of the décor of “Manfred:”
“Ye avalanches, whom a breath draws down
In mountainous overwhelming, come and crush me!