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Home  »  The World’s Best Poetry  »  “Mont Blanc yet gleams on high”

Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.

IV. Inland Waters: Highlands

“Mont Blanc yet gleams on high”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)

From “Mont Blanc

MONT BLANC yet gleams on high:—the power is there,

The still and solemn power of many sights,

And many sounds, and much of life and death.

In the calm darkness of the moonless nights,

In the lone glare of day, the snows descend

Upon that Mountain; none beholds them there,

Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun,

Or the star-beams dart thro’ them:—Winds contend

Silently there, and heap the snow with breath

Rapid and strong, but silently! Its home

The voiceless lightning in these solitudes

Keeps innocently, and like vapor broods

Over the snow. The secret strength of things

Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome

Of heaven is as a law, inhabits thee!

And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,

If to the human mind’s imaginings

Silence and solitude were vacancy?