126 THE SOUL AND THE INFINITE.

"O dread and silent mount! I gazed upon thee,
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,
Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer
I worshipped the Invisible alone.

Yet like some sweet beguiling melody,

So sweet, we know not we are listening to it,

Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought,
Yea, with my Life and Life's own secret joy;
Till the dilating Soul, enrapt, transfused,

Into the mighty Vision passing-there

As in her natural form, swelled vast to Heaven !"

From the material form which in its indefinite vastness becomes to us an expression of the infinite, the soul ascends to the infinite itself. In the greatness of its idea it becomes conscious of its own greatness, and seems to clothe itself with those majestic forms in which its idea is reflected.

IX.

Lake Leman - Geneva.

ROM the Signal, the view of the head of the lake

is perfect. This is the grandest part of it. Is this the scene of the thunder-storm which Byron describes? I have thought so, since he mentions Clarens immediately after. The rent in the mountains, where the "swift Rhone cleaves his way," appears, however, to refer more naturally to the wild gorge near Collouges. It is probable that he intends to grasp the whole lake and its sublime scenery in his description. But while standing on these heights above Lausanne, although the heavens were clear and the sun shining in his strength, the idea of a storm among these mountains rushed into my mind, and I repeated to myself the wonderful lines:

"Far along,

From peak to peak, the rattling crags among,

128

BYRON-ROUSSEAU.

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!"

The conception is very grand, and unsurpassed, if equalled, by any similar description in human language. The storms enthrone themselves, each on his mountain, and as if in wild sport, "fling their thunderbolts from hand to hand:" the mountains roar and give out their echoes as if rejoicing o'er the birth of an earthquake: the big rain dances to the earth: the lightning gleams like phosphorescence over the surface of the lake: and the Jura and the Alps from all their peaks shout to each other. All is life: the agencies of nature become mighty spirits; and darkness, and lightning, and thunder, and tempest-all that is terrifying to man, is but the stir and glee of their sport among the hills. To witness such a storm amid such scenes were worth more than years of ordinary dull life.

To the admirers of Rousseau this is a classic region. Byron was one of them. His admiration of Rousseau led him to write verses which throw a more genuine charm over Lake Leman and its shores than any thing which Rousseau has written. Byron's poetry is noble. What charm is to be found in the sentimental Sensualist, to a man of thought and true taste, I never yet could comprehend.

The names of Rousseau, Voltaire, Gibbon, Madame de Stäel, and Byron, are all associated with the picturesque shores of this lake. But of all these, Byron, by his Prisoner of Chillon, and his third canto of Childe Harold, is the only

LAKE LEMAN.

129

one who has really given a lofty, tender, and classic interest to these scenes. Together with an inimitable power of description, there is a depth and almost sacredness of sentiment which show the better elements of his nature, and place him very far above Jean Jacques.

The following stanzas breathe the very spirit of these scenes. I have in my mind now a sense of the beauty which dwells there—a beauty whose power I felt at Lausanne and Geneva, by day and by night, and while sailing down the lake and back again. These express it all:

"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.

"It is the hush of night, and all between

Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear,
Mellowed and mingling, yet distinctly seen,
Save darkened Jura, whose capt heights appear
Precipitously steep; and drawing near,
There breathes a living fragrance from the shore,
Of flowers yet fresh with childhood; on the ear
Drops the light drip of the suspended oar,

Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more:

130

STANZAS OF BYRON.

"He is an evening reveller, who makes
His life an infancy, and sings his fill
At intervals, some bird from out the brakes
Starts into voice a moment, then is still.
There seems a floating whisper on the hill,
But that is fancy, for the starlight dews
All silently their tears of love instill,
Weeping themselves away, till they infuse
Deep into Nature's breast the spirit of her hues.

"Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven!

If in your bright leaves we would read the fate
Of men and empires,-'tis to be forgiven,
That in our aspirations to be great,

Our destinies o'erleap their mortal state,

And claim a kindred with you; for ye are

A beauty and a mystery, and create

In us such love and reverence from afar,

That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a star.

"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 lull'd lake and mountain coast,

All is concenter'd 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 defence.

"Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt
In solitude, where we are least alone;

A truth, which through our being then doth melt
And purifies from self: it is a tone,

The soul and source of music, which makes known