See me, by elemental warfare torn
From yonder peak's aerial crest,
Now on the rifted breast
Of this ice--ocean borne
By ministering ages without fail
Down to my rest
Among the shattered heaps in yonder deep--set vale.

Gray am I, for my conflict with the powers
Of air doth never cease; around
My lifted head doth sound
The voice of all the hours
Struck forth in tempest from my fretted side
The snows rebound:
The avalanche's spray--balls in my rifts abide.

Glory and ruin doth my course behold,
After each wild and dreadful night
The day--birth heavenly bright
Floods all this vale with gold;
And when the day sinks down, on every peak
Last shafts of light
The downward fading sky with lines of ruby streak.

All summer long the moan of many woods
Comes to me, and from far conveyed
The tumbling of the low cascade,
And rush of valley floods.
The lavish rock--rose clothes with crimson hue
Each upward glade,
And the Alp--violet strews its stars of brightest blue.

Thus slowly down long ages shall I pass,
Unnoticed, save by practised eye
Of them who use thus high
The traveller's steps to lead;
Then when the years by God apportionèd
Shall have past by,
Leap from the lofty brink, and fill the vale with dread.