I hear ye momently above, beneath,
Crash with a frequent conflict; but ye pass,
And only fall on things which still would live.
“The mists boil up around the glaciers; clouds
Rise curling fast beneath me, white and sulphury,
Like foam from the roused ocean of deep Hell.”
He saw the Grindelwald Glacier distinct, though it was twilight, and he compared it to a frozen hurricane, a figure which he put unchanged in his poem:
“O’er the savage sea,
The glassy ocean of the mountain ice,