CXVII.  THUNDERSTORM ON THE ALPS. (408)

  Clear, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake,
  With the wild world I dwell in, is a thing
  Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake
  Earth’s troubled waters for a purer spring. 
  This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing
  To waft me from distraction; once I loved
  Torn ocean’s roar, but thy soft murmuring
  Sounds sweet, as if a sister’s voice reproved,
That I with stern delights should e’er have been so moved.

  All heaven and earth are still—­though not in sleep,
  But breathless, as we grow when feeling most;
  And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep—­
  All heaven and earth are still:  from the high host
  Of stars, to the lulled lake and mountain coast,
  All is concentered in a life intense,
  Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost,
  But hath a part of being, and a sense
Of that which is of all Creator and defense.

  The sky is changed! and such a change!  O night,
  And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong,
  Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light
  Of a dark eye in woman!  Far along,
  From peak to peak, the rattling crags among,
  Leaps the live thunder!  Not from one lone cloud,
  But every mountain now hath found a tongue,
  And Jura answers, through her misty shroud,
  Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud!

  And this is in the night.—­Most glorious night! 
  Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be
  A sharer in thy fierce and far delight,—­
  A portion of the tempest and of thee! 
  How the lit lake shines,—­a phosphoric sea! 
  And the big rain comes dancing to the earth! 
  And now again, ’tis black,—­and now, the glee
  Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain mirth,
As if they did rejoice o’er a young earthquake’s birth.

  Now, where the swift Rhone cleaves his way between
  Heights which appear as lovers who have parted
  In hate, whose mining depths so intervene,
  That they can meet no more, though broken-hearted;
  Though in their souls, which thus each other thwarted,
  Love was the very root of the fond rage,
  Which blighted their life’s bloom, and then—­departed. 
  Itself expired, but leaving them an age
Of years, all winters,—­war within themselves to wage.

Now, where the quick Rhone thus hath cleft his way,
The mightiest of the storms hath ta’en his stand! 
For here, not one, but many make their play,
And fling their thunderbolts from hand to hand,
Flashing and cast around!  Of all the band,
The brightest through these parted hills hath forked
His lightnings,—­as if he did understand,
That in such gaps as desolation worked,
There, the hot shaft should blast whatever therein lurked. 
—­Byron.

Note.—­Lake Leman (or Lake of Geneva) is in the south-western part of Switzerland, separating it in part from Savoy.  The Rhone flows through it, entering by a deep narrow gap, with mountain groups on either hand, eight or nine thousand feet above the water.  The scenery about the lake is magnificent, the Jura mountains bordering it on the northwest, and the Alps lying on the south and east.