The child of eight or nine
years regarded her rhymes as only one among her many games and
pastimes.
But with this ideal picture of mountain scenery there came to me
a revelation of poetry as the one unattainable something which I
must reach out after, because I could not live without it. The
thought of it was to me like the thought of God and of truth. To
leave out poetry would be to lose the real meaning of life. I
felt this very blindly and vaguely, no doubt; but the feeling was
deep. It was as if Mont Blanc stood visibly before me, while I
murmured to myself in lonely places --
"Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!
Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who with lovely flowers
Of living blue spread garlands at your feet?"
And then the
"Pine groves with their soft and soul-like sound"
gave glorious answer, with the streams and torrents, and my
child-heart in its trance echoed the poet's invocation,--
"Rise, like a cloud of incense from the earth!
And tell the stars, and tell the rising sun,
Earth, with her thousand voices, calls on GOD!"
I have never visited Switzerland, but I surely saw the Alps, with
Coleridge, in my childhood.
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