"
In reading this, "Swiss Minstrel's Lament over the Ruins of
Goldau," I first felt my imagination thrilled with the terrible
beauty of the mountains--a terror and a sublimity which attracted
my thoughts far more than it awed them. But the poem in which
they burst upon me as real presences, unseen, yet known in their
remote splendor as kingly friends before whom I could bow, yet
with whom I could aspire,--for something like this I think
mountains must always be to those who truly love them,--was
Coleridge's "Mont Blanc before Sunrise," in this same "First
Class Book." I believe that poetry really first took possession
of me in that poem, so that afterwards I could not easily mistake
the genuineness of its ring, though my ear might not be
sufficiently trained to catch its subtler harmonies. This great
mountain poem struck some hidden key-note in my nature, and I
knew thenceforth something of what it was to live in poetry, and
to have it live in me. Of course I did not consider my own
foolish little versifying poetry.
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