Helen Maria Williams

Hymn Written Among the Alps

CREATION’S GOD! with thought elate,
   Thy hand divine I see
Impressed on scenes, where all is great,
   Where all is full of thee!
 
Where stern the Alpine mountains raise
   Their heads of massive snow;
When on the rolling storm I gaze,
   That hangs-how far below!
 
Where on some bold, stupendous height,
   The Eagle sits alone;
Or soaring wings his sullen flight
   To haunts still more his own:
 
Where the sharp rock the Chamois treads,
   Or, slippery summit scales;
Or where the whitening Snow-bird spreads
   Her plumes to icy gales:
 
Where the rude cliff’s steep column glows
   With morning’s tint of blue;
Or evening on the glacier throws
   The rose’s blushing hue:
 
Or where by twilight’s softer light,
   The mountain’s shadow bends;
And sudden casts a partial night,
   As black its form descends:
 
Where the full ray of noon alone
   Down the deep valley falls:
Or where the sunbeam never shone
   Between its rifted walls:
 
Where cloudless regions calm the soul,
   Bid mortal cares be still,
Can passion’s wayward wish controul,
   And rectify the will:
 
Where midst some vast expanse the mind,
   Which swelling virtue fires,
Forgets that earth it leaves behind,
   And to it’s heaven aspires:
 
Where far along the desart air
   Is heard no creature’s call:
And undisturbing mortal ear
   The avalanches fall:
 
Where rushing from their snowy source,
   The daring torrents urge
Their loud-toned waters headlong course,
   And lift their feathered surge:
 
Where swift the lines of light and shade
   Flit o’er the lucid lake:
Or the shrill winds its breast invade,
   And its green billows wake:
 
Where on the slope, with speckled dye
   The pigmy herds I scan;
Or soothed, the scattered Chalets spy,
   The last abode of man:
 
Or where the flocks refuse to pass,
   And the lone peasant mows,
Fixed on his knees, the pendent grass,
   Which down the steep he throws:
 
Where high the dangerous pathway leads
   Above the gulph profound,
From whence the shrinking eye recedes,
   Nor finds repose around:
 
Where red the mountain-ash reclines
   Along the clifted rock;
Where firm the dark unbending pines
   The howling tempests mock:
 
Where, level with the ice-ribb’d bound
   The yellow harvests glow;
Or vales with purple vines are crown’d
   Beneath impending snow:
 
Where the rich min’rals catch the ray,
   With varying lustre bright,
And glittering fragments strew the way
   With sparks of liquid light:
 
Or where the moss forbears to creep
   Where loftier summits rear
Their untrod snow, and frozen sleep
   Locks all the uncolour’d year:
 
In every scene, where every hour
   Sheds some terrific grace,
In Nature’s vast o’erwhelming power,
   THEE, THEE, my GOD, I trace!
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