Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
France: Vols. IX–X. 1876–79.
In High Savoy
By Francis Turner Palgrave (18241897)N
Men take and mould at will:
Scoop havens from the wasteful sea;
Tame heaths to green fertility,
And grind their roadway through the hill.
Changed by the hands of men;
What harvest plains of golden hope,
What vineyards on the amber slope,
What lurid forge-lights in the glen!
Of what was all her own;
Keeps the wild surface of the moor,
Or where the glacier-torrents roar,
Reigns o’er gray piles of wrinkled stone.
Contracts her precinct fair,
Yet round smooth sweeps of vine-set land
Her vaporous ranks of summit stand
As ghosts in morning’s silent air:
She vindicates her right;
Green billows of primeval copse,
Tossing a myriad spiry tops
’Neath the full zenith-flood of light.
Heaven’s azure stainless lies,
From the White Mount the white clouds strike,
As if volcano-born, or like
The smoke of some great sacrifice.