From out the depths of the abyss,
Faint echoes of a torrent’s roar
O’er crags whence lordly eagles soar
To poise above the precipice.
A dizzy pathway, sheer and steep;
A startled catching of the breath;
And, bearing menaces of death,
A loosened snow-drift’s sudden sweep!
Then, blown from out the upper sky,
Keen, fitful gusts of icy air,
So light, so tenuous and rare,
The heart leaps strangely swift thereby.
The white moon floating in the calm
Still ether space, so near, it seems,
To grasp his eager childhood dreams,
One need but thither reach his palm.
A sense of majesties and mights,
An exaltation born of these;
—The summit’s awful silences;
A glimpse of Godhead from the heights!