Stanzas From The Grande Chartreuse By Matthew Arnold - Gideon Wagner

Stanzas From The Grande Chartreuse By Matthew Arnold

Through Alpine meadows softsuffused

With rain where thick the crocus blows

Past the dark forges long disused

The muletrack from Saint Laurent goes

The bridge is crossd and slow we ride

Through forest up the mountainside

The autumnal evening darkens round

The wind is up and drives the rain

While hark far down with strangled sound

Doth the Dead Guiers stream complain

Where that wet smoke among the woods

Over his boiling cauldron broods

Swift rush the spectral vapours white

Past limestone scars with ragged pines

Showingthen blotting from our sight

Haltthrough the clouddrift something shines

High in the valley wet and drear

The huts of Courrerie appear

Strike leftward cries our guide and higher

Mounts up the stony forestway

At last the encircling trees retire

Look through the showery twilight grey

What pointed roofs are these advance

A palace of the Kings of France

Approach for what we seek is here

Alight and sparely sup and wait

For rest in this outbuilding near

Then cross the sward and reach that gate

Knock pass the wicket Thou art come

To the Carthusians worldfamed home

The silent courts where night and day

Into their stonecarved basins cold

The splashing icy fountains play

The humid corridors behold

Where ghostlike in the deepening night

Cowld forms brush by in gleaming white

The chapel where no organs peal

Invests the stern and naked prayer

With penitential cries they kneel

And wrestle rising then with bare

And white uplifted faces stand

Passing the Host from hand to hand

Each takes and then his visage wan

Is buried in his cowl once more

The cellsthe suffering Son of Man

Upon the wallthe kneeworn floor

And where they sleep that wooden bed

Shall their coffin be when dead

The library where tract and tome

Not to feed priestly pride are there

To hymn the conquering march of Rome

Nor yet to amuse as ours are

They paint of souls the inner strife

Their drops of blood their death in life

The garden overgrownyet mild

See fragrant herbs are flowering there

Strong children of the Alpine wild

Whose culture is the brethrens care

Of human tasks their only one

And cheerful works beneath the sun