together.
Plumes white and restless like foam on the breakers
Drift to and fro with the tide of the battle;
Falchions and maces and curtaxes gleaming
A moment aloft, strike sparks in descending
On corslet and casque and dinted escutcheon,
Whilst out of the contest, with stumbling footsteps
The wounded are led sore stricken and helpless.
Ladies in sarcenet, arabesque broidered
With blossoms that climb fantastic in colour,—
Stiff flowers of blazonry's formal convention
That rise from the hem to the throat in profusion,
Where carcanets flash on bosoms unquiet,—
Look from their casements with eyes full of wonder,
Down on the conflict that rages below them,
Fierce in the shock and the heat of encounter,
Hearing the war-cries and clashing of weapons,
Winding of horns, and the groans of the dying.
Till all was lost in the thickening curtain,
Veiled by the mist were my golden romances.

Once when a snowstorm swept over lake Leman
Filling the distance with wildly tossed snowflakes,
I pictured a scene in the heart of the mountains,
Hidden in shadows, unknown to the climber,
Out of the range of Humanity's footsteps.
There is the cave where the slumbering ice god
Hides from the gaze of the wandering stranger,
Shut in the depths of the mountain's recesses,
Rent long ago by the force of upheavals
In the wild turmoil and labour of earthquake.
There sits the god of the cold everlasting,
Guarding the spirits of men who have perished
In their endeavours to master the secrets
Of paths that have never by footsteps been trodden.
In the ice temple his figure majestic
Looms from a throne that through aeons uncounted
Has stood in the gloom and the silence eternal.
Weird is the throng of the spirits in thraldom:
Silent they steal from their icy sepulture,
Slow-pacing figures unchanged and unchanging:
By violent death, swift, ruthless and lonely,
Sentenced to wander for ever in darkness,
Pent in the masterful ice god's dominion.
Primitive hunters with flint-headed arrows,
Whose limited minds ignored the distinction
Engendered by knowledge, of good and of evil:
Acting by impulse and guided by instinct:
Living in caves like the bears and the foxes,
Facing with cunning and courage their quarry,
Guarding their women and feeding their children,
Almost as fierce as the creatures they hunted.
Men who came later throughout the long ages,
Wandering fugitives driven by fortune
Far from their homes to the wild desolation,
Slaves of illusion that lures to destruction:
Some with a love for adventure and daring,
Some to escape from the ills that pursued them,
Some in response to the strong fascination
That calls from the heights of the untrodden mountains,
All destined by fate, that watches unceasing,
To die in the darkness forgotten for ever,
Pent in the ice god's immutable kingdom.

Wafted by breezes, my white-sailed felucca
Slipped through the blueness to where the grim stronghold
Of Chillon keeps ever in grateful remembrance
The patriot Bonivard, champion of freedom.
The pillar of pain where, writhing in torment,
The captives were scourged at cruelty's bidding,
Is still to be seen, an eloquent witness.
Tenantless now is the cavernous dungeon
Where wretches awaited through darkness unending
The dawn of their last and dreaded to-morrow.
Stripped of its horrors, the chamber of torture
Echoes no more to the shrieks of its victims,
And death's grim abode where agony ended
Is free from the crimes that redden its records.
There by the column of stone in the dungeon
Where Bonivard lay to pine through the seasons
Of six weary years, I mused on his story.
Undaunted by death's ever-threatening shadow,
Unconquered though insolent tyranny triumphed,
Chilled in the summer and frozen in winter,
Famished, neglected and loaded with fetters,
Yet borne up within by courage unflinching,
Supported by Faith when Hope had departed,
Scorning to murmur, he waited with patience.
Morning's faint light through the narrow embrasure,
The wandering cry of a sea-mew in freedom
Heightened the gloom of his roughly hewn prison,
Making a summons to death a deliverance.
Night fell about him in Stygian darkness,
While the faint lap of the waters of Leman,
Beating the ramparts with madding persistence,
Whispered despair in the still isolation.
What were his thoughts when the vault of his prison
Rang with glad cries in the glare of the torches?
Breaking the silence, dispelling the shadows
That darkened his life and threatened his reason,
What were his thoughts at the moment of freedom?
When round him a tempest of passion was raging,
An unloosened storm of passionate feeling,
When men incoherent and hoarse from the conflict
Fought for the honour of breaking his fetters,
Leaving him breathless with hearty embraces,
Weak and unmanned in the sudden revulsion,
Carried away by the flood of emotion,
With something unknown that stifled expression,
That silenced his voice and heaved in his bosom.

Strong is the spell of the dream-haunted mountains,
Ruddy with gold in the glory of sunrise,
Purple and silver and blue in the daytime,
Tinged by the amethyst splendours of sunset,
Gloomy, majestic and dark in the twilight,
Mystic by moonlight, ethereal, airy,
Changeful and fickle in hues as the opal,
Under the mutable lights and the shadows,
Ever alluring with subtle attraction.

Far, far away are the waters of Leman
Whence I have fled at the call of the mountains.
Here in the valley where rushes a torrent,
Constant and cold, be it summer or winter,
A village lies hid and hither the climbers,
Strangely alike in their eager impatience,
Wearing the look of enwrapped expectation,
Pause ere they start on their perilous journey.
Hemming me round, the implacable mountains
Shut out the world and confine me in durance,
Bending my soul to the yoke of their bondage,
Dwarfing my self and my little emotions,
Waking desire to escape limitations
And barriers imposed by narrow horizons.
Rugged, majestic, they tower above me,
As lonely and pensive I gaze in the torrent,
Wondering now at the summons insistent,
No longer in dreams and rovings of fancy,
But weighted with impulse, defying resistance,
Rousing unrest like a spirit of evil.
So, as I linger awhile in the village,
Completely I know each day brings me nearer
To what lies beyond, in the regions of silence.

Now it is over. The lights of the village,
The children at play, the clink from the smithy,
The gurgle and rush of the hurrying torrent,
The rattle of wheels, the tinkle of cowbells,
The inn's open window whence converse in fragments
Floats out with the odours of beer and tobacco,
All welcome me back with familiar voices.
Here time moves onward with rhythmic precision:
Breakfast and dinner, and bed for the darkness,
With Sunday to part one week from another:
Spring time and winter, the snow and the sunshine,
And sooner or later a cross in the churchyard.
Time lacks proportion away in the mountains.
What is a day or an hour or a lifetime
Gauged by the ebb and the flow of the ages
Shown in the tidemarks on crags prehistoric?
If, as men say, time is measured by heartbeats,
I wandered through years of vivid emotions.
Pelion and Ossa, by arrogant Titans
Profanely uplifted to challenge Olympus,
Repeated themselves in the blueness above me.
Sunsets and dawns such as glowed on the marshes,
Silurian