The Mountains Were A Never-Ceasing Marvel.
Sometimes They Rose Straight Up Out Of The Lake,
And Towered Aloft And
Overshadowed our pygmy steamer
with their prodigious bulk in the most impressive way.
Not snow-clad mountains, these, yet they
Climbed high
enough toward the sky to meet the clouds and veil their
foreheads in them. They were not barren and repulsive,
but clothed in green, and restful and pleasant to the eye.
And they were so almost straight-up-and-down, sometimes,
that one could not imagine a man being able to keep
his footing upon such a surface, yet there are paths,
and the Swiss people go up and down them every day.
Sometimes one of these monster precipices had the slight
inclination of the huge ship-houses in dockyards
- then high aloft, toward the sky, it took a little
stronger inclination, like that of a mansard roof - and
perched on this dizzy mansard one's eye detected little
things like martin boxes, and presently perceived that
these were the dwellings of peasants - an airy place
for a home, truly. And suppose a peasant should walk
in his sleep, or his child should fall out of the front
yard? - the friends would have a tedious long journey down
out of those cloud-heights before they found the remains.
And yet those far-away homes looked ever so seductive,
they were so remote from the troubled world, they dozed
in such an atmosphere of peace and dreams - surely no one
who has learned to live up there would ever want
to live on a meaner level.
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