haunts of the early creation,
Long ere the age of humanity's advent,
Gleamed through the vapours and red exhalations
Rising from bottomless pits to encolour
Weirdly the matrix, volcanic, primeval,
Riven and torn in the birth-throes of Cosmos.
Slippery ledges uneven and narrow,
Through rarefied air that maddens the pulses,
Treacherous footpaths inviting destruction,
Where fear in the heart disorders the senses.
Vertiginate chasms, abysmal, terrific,
Unfathomed and sheer with never a foothold,
Compelling the gaze with cold fascination.
Stretches of billowy acres of whiteness
Dimming the eyes with their endless expanses;
Ridges upstanding in ice walls cemented
By glacial pressure of slow-moving masses.
Caverns with ice shapes, blue-tinted, translucent:
Columns and altars and figures fantastic,
Imagined in dreams or pictured in fever,
Softly illumed by the moonlight's reflection.
There is the haunt of the evil ice maidens,
The servants of Death, who lure with their beauty,
Who bathe in the stream of the glacier water,
The glacial water that flows through the caverns,
Silent and deep as the river of Lethe.
These memories hold me. I live in a fever.
The air that I breathe, the influence round me
Are charged with a strange and volatile essence
That throbs in my veins and quickens my breathing.
Held by the mountains, I languish in bondage
Under the masterful sway of their presence.
Restless though weary I dream of their perils,
Slipping down chasms with death at the bottom,
Or over the desolate ice fields I wander,
Hopeless, forgotten and lost in the snowdrifts,
Wandering ever past hope of redemption.
Sometimes I swing with a pendulum's measure,
Fitfully swayed by the wind o'er a chasm
That gapes far below, relentless and cruel,
Conscious of all in the terrible moments
That pass till I drop to the doom that is waiting
Far in the depths of the yawning crevasses,
And wake at the instant supreme of destruction.

To-morrow at dawn I fly from the village
Back to the peace of the waters of Leman.

Gone, gone at last, is the morbid obsession!
Gone to the shade in the regions of Limbo.
Far, far away, o'er the waters of Leman,
Mistily outlined and faint in the distance,
Threatening no longer, the dream-haunted mountains
Lazily whisper of rest and contentment.

Softly the plash of the glittering fountain
Falls on the night with the scent of mimosa,
Mingled with polyglot phrases and laughter,
Marking the pause 'twixt a waltz and mazurka.
Soft are the lamps in the Kursaal rotunda
Lighting discreetly the hall of lost footsteps
Whose gleaming mosaics are painted with garlands,
Blossoms exotic, luxuriant, languid,
Red as the souls of the people about them,
Hinting at passions through crimson and purple,
Fitting the vogue of this temple of pleasure.
On a divan in the hall where the idlers
Promenade slowly, in converse together,
I sit all alone in calm contemplation,
Hearing the orchestra faint in the distance
And the croupier's voice from his chamber seductive,
Parrot-like crying in stale iteration,
Summons and challenge across the green table.
Keen-eyed old gamesters who prowl round the players,
Seeking a pigeon to pluck at their leisure:
Black-whiskered barons with blurred reputations
Smirking at B. and his girls from Chicago:
Swaggering captains at best detrimental:
A country-bred youth just come to a fortune,
Trying in vain to conceal his amazement:
Couples awaiting the Absolute's fiat,
Now in pursuit of a flying illusion:
Hebrews from Frankfort and bankers from Paris
Chatting to ladies resplendent in diamonds;
A burgess of London whose wife says: "Disgraceful,"
But lingers to study Parisian fashions:
Gamblers inveterate bent to a system,
Silent, unheeding, absorbed in their figures:
Well-groomed young fellows, light-hearted and careless,
Come for the dance and the fun of flirtation,
Bright-eyed and merry, unconsciously breathing
The poisonous air of sepulchres whited.
Perdita, watchful and guardedly smiling,
Trying to lessen the distance between us,
Wafts me a sign with a spray of verbena.
Is she an angel, a beast or a demon,
Or spirit incarnate that onward is passing
To higher avatars by long transmigration?
Ah! how it warms one, this human deflection,
This touch with familiar follies and foibles,
After the limitless space of the aeons,
Out of the measure of time as we know it,
Far in the distant and echoless ages,
Austere, and untouched by our passing emotions,
Where I have wandered in lonely remoteness
Under the passionless spell of the mountains.

Cold and relentless, eternally lasting!
Silent inscriptions in cryptical cipher!
Unbroken record of time since creation,
Whose secret is hid from human conception.
How small are the things humanity prizes,
The feverish joys of passion and pleasure,
That pass like a dream to dusky oblivion!
How short is man's life compared with the ages
That frown from the face of the mystical mountains,
Far in the blue o'er the waters of Leman.

The Old Manor House

The rusted gates whose forgings fine
Enlace a gilded coronet,
Now dim in lustreless decline,
Groaned as I passed the lichened shapes
Of rampant griffin on each side,
Stiff with heraldic, stony pride.
Then through the grass-grown drive I passed
With ancient oaks on either hand,
Throwing their shadows dark and vast
Upon the bracken at their feet
Where rabbits peeped in fear and ran
From the rare sound of living man.
For here no more the sumptuous train
Displays the pomp of falconry;
No more, besprent with mire and rain,
The messenger-at-arms rides in:
Nor, with his retinue of knights
Some great man at the house alights.

Above the portico
Of the great silent house,
The quarterings' tinctures glow,
Blazoning its history,
From the old Sieur de Caulx,
Whose heavy Norman sword
Helped Harold's overthrow,
And whose long line of sons
Stretches, like a shadow,
Thrown in the eventide,
Through the old folio
Where illumined pages
Bravely the records show,
Till the last, lonely heir
Was carried down below,
To the cold marble vaults
A century ago.

A gallery o'erlooks the hall,
A gallery where minstrels played
And with their lutes sweet music made,
While from the weapons on the wall,
Reflected shone the lights that glowed
Above the hospitable board
When each successive, generous lord
His loyalty or grandeur showed.
Kings feasted there with stately dames,
Ambassadors and Cardinals
Who, cheered with wine and madrigals,
Fed with their fancies amorous flames.
And at some great eventful scene
Full many a dance the chamber graced,
Pavanes and sarabands were paced,
And minuets when Anne was queen.

My footsteps echoing from the panelled walls,
Stayed the long sleep of years,
Stirring the thick, accumulated dust
To movement in the ray of light that falls,
From a half-shuttered oriel which appears
Between the rafters, just
Where a stone mullion its carved apex rears.
Faint voices whispered round me as I stood
Spellbound and listening there:
The ghostly strains of melodies forgot,
The happy laughter of fair womanhood:
Children in noisy play, without a care:
Fierce cries with passion hot,