Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882). Complete Poetical Works. 1893.

Christus: A Mystery

Part II. The Golden Legend. V. III. The St. Gothard Pass

THIS is the highest point. Two ways the rivers

Leap down to different seas, and as they roll

Grow deep and still, and their majestic presence

Becomes a benefaction to the towns

They visit, wandering silently among them,

Like patriarchs old among their shining tents.

How bleak and bare it is! Nothing but mosses

Grow on these rocks.

Yet are they not forgotten;

Beneficent Nature sends the mists to feed them.

See yonder little cloud, that, borne aloft

So tenderly by the wind, floats fast away

Over the snowy peaks! It seems to me

The body of St. Catherine, borne by angels!

Thou art St. Catherine, and invisible angels

Bear thee across these chasms and precipices,

Lest thou shouldst dash thy feet against a stone!

Would I were borne unto my grave, as she was,

Upon angelic shoulders! Even now

I seem uplifted by them, light as air!

What sound is that?

The tumbling avalanches!

How awful, yet how beautiful!

These are

The voices of the mountains! Thus they ope

Their snowy lips, and speak unto each other,

In the primeval language, lost to man.

What land is this that spreads itself beneath us?

Italy! Italy!

Land of the Madonna

How beautiful it is! It seems a garden

Of Paradise!

Nay, of Gethsemane

To thee and me, of passion and of prayer!

Yet once of Paradise. Long years ago

I wandered as a youth among its bowers

And never from my heart has faded quite

Its memory, that, like a summer sunset,

Encircles with a ring of purple light

All the horizon of my youth.

O friends!

The days are short, the way before us long;

We must not linger, if we think to reach

The inn at Belinzona before vespers!