Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
France: Vols. IX–X. 1876–79.

Savoy: Mont Blanc

Mont Blanc Revisited

By John Ruskin (1819–1900)

O MOUNT beloved! mine eyes again

Behold the twilight sanguine stain

Along thy peaks expire;

O mount beloved! thy frontier waste

I seek with a religious haste

And reverent desire.

They meet me midst thy shadows cold,—

Such thoughts as holy men of old

Amidst the desert found;

Such gladness as in Him they felt,

Who with them through the darkness dwelt,

And compassed all around.

O, happy if His will were so,

To give me manna here for snow,

And, by the torrent side,

To lead me as he leads his flocks

Of wild deer, through the lonely rocks,

In peace unterrified;

Since, from the things that trustful rest,—

The partridge on her purple nest,

The marmot in his den,—

God wins a worship more resigned,

A purer praise than He can find

Upon the lips of men.

Alas for man! who hath no sense

Of gratefulness nor confidence,

But still rejects and raves;

That all God’s love can hardly win

One soul from taking pride in sin,

And pleasure over graves.

Yet let me not, like him who trod

In wrath of old the Mount of God,

Forget the thousands left;

Lest haply, when I seek his face,

The whirlwind of the cave replace

The glory of the cleft.

But teach me, God, a milder thought,

Lest I, of all Thy blood has bought,

Least honorable be;

And this, that moves me to condemn,

Be rather want of love for them

Than jealousy for Thee.