The Call of the Mountains Part 1

The Call of the Mountains.

by James E. Pickering.

The Call of the Mountains

Under the shade of the Kursaal veranda Idly I follow the flight of the seagulls, Gleaming like snow when their wings catch the sunshine, While from the palm-house adjacent is wafted Music half drowned in a babel of voices, Fitting the mode of this temple of follies.

Far though the mountains, their influence, ever Changeful in temper, from sombre to smiling, Constant in wileful and mystic allurement, Rouses unrest and a strange fascination.

Limpid and blue are the waters of Leman Clear in the deepness, translucent and shining, Blue as the ether's ineffable azure, Bright in the glow of the midsummer sunshine.

Cleaving the air with their palpitant pinions, Wheeling and drifting, the beautiful seagulls Fly with the grace of unconscious perfection, Crying exultant and wild in a chorus.

Are you not fit for the realm of immortals, To float on the winds of the gardens Elysian?

Or must you hover a little while longer-- Wandering souls in a state of probation-- Half-way uplifted beyond our defilement, Half-way removed from the land of the blessed?

Far in the distance beyond the blue water, Rises the h.o.a.ry old father of mountains, Rugged and scarred with antiquity's furrows, Crowned with the snows of a million winters.

Low in the shade of his ponderous presence, Dappling the slopes, are the homesteads of peasants, Each with its cloud of blue vapour ascending: And sweetly the bells across the green pastures Answer each other with voices persistent, Telling the herdsman the tale of his charges.

Grim is the smile of the white-headed mountain For toilers below in the slumbering valley, Grim is the glance with a touch of derision, Seeming to say to his towering brothers-- Catogne and the broad-shouldered heights of the Midi, "Iguanodon,--Mastodon,--Man,--in their pa.s.sing Serve but as signs on the path of the ages."

Softly the plash of the waters of Leman Sounds from the rough-tumbled stones at its margin: Gently the zephyrs play over its surface, Making it glitter with myriads of sparklets.

Swiftly the barques trim their sails in the sunshine-- Sails high and slender that swell to the breezes, White as the snow on the breast of the Jungfrau-- Mirrored in whiteness upon the blue water.

As I sat watching the lake and the mountains, Slowly a haze like a curtain of muslin, Flimsy and fine like a texture of cobweb, Drifted and rose till it shut out the bases And bulk of the mountains across the still water, Whilst high above it the crests and sierras Stood out as castles and walls of enchantment, Raised in the air like king Solomon's city, Held up aloft by invisible genii.

Then in the faintly drawn lines of escarpment, Battlements, pinnacles, turrets and bastions Sprang into being, and fancy, untrammelled, Pictured a palace with walls, and a fortress Beleaguered and stormed by a shadowy army, Ma.s.sed under pennons seen dim through the vapour.

Over the drawbridge a desperate sortie Made by the knights of the castle invested Brings the foes quickly in conflict together.

Plumes white and restless like foam on the breakers Drift to and fro with the tide of the battle; Falchions and maces and curtaxes gleaming A moment aloft, strike sparks in descending On corslet and casque and dinted escutcheon, Whilst out of the contest, with stumbling footsteps The wounded are led sore stricken and helpless.

Ladies in sarcenet, arabesque broidered With blossoms that climb fantastic in colour,-- Stiff flowers of blazonry's formal convention That rise from the hem to the throat in profusion, Where carcanets flash on bosoms unquiet,-- Look from their cas.e.m.e.nts with eyes full of wonder, Down on the conflict that rages below them, Fierce in the shock and the heat of encounter, Hearing the war-cries and clashing of weapons, Winding of horns, and the groans of the dying.

Till all was lost in the thickening curtain, Veiled by the mist were my golden romances.

Once when a snowstorm swept over lake Leman Filling the distance with wildly tossed snowflakes, I pictured a scene in the heart of the mountains, Hidden in shadows, unknown to the climber, Out of the range of Humanity's footsteps.

There is the cave where the slumbering ice G.o.d Hides from the gaze of the wandering stranger, Shut in the depths of the mountain's recesses, Rent long ago by the force of upheavals In the wild turmoil and labour of earthquake.

There sits the G.o.d of the cold everlasting, Guarding the spirits of men who have perished In their endeavours to master the secrets Of paths that have never by footsteps been trodden.

In the ice temple his figure majestic Looms from a throne that through aeons uncounted Has stood in the gloom and the silence eternal.

Weird is the throng of the spirits in thraldom: Silent they steal from their icy sepulture, Slow-pacing figures unchanged and unchanging: By violent death, swift, ruthless and lonely, Sentenced to wander for ever in darkness, Pent in the masterful ice G.o.d's dominion.

Primitive hunters with flint-headed arrows, Whose limited minds ignored the distinction Engendered by knowledge, of good and of evil: Acting by impulse and guided by instinct: Living in caves like the bears and the foxes, Facing with cunning and courage their quarry, Guarding their women and feeding their children, Almost as fierce as the creatures they hunted.

Men who came later throughout the long ages, Wandering fugitives driven by fortune Far from their homes to the wild desolation, Slaves of illusion that lures to destruction: Some with a love for adventure and daring, Some to escape from the ills that pursued them, Some in response to the strong fascination That calls from the heights of the untrodden mountains, All destined by fate, that watches unceasing, To die in the darkness forgotten for ever, Pent in the ice G.o.d's immutable kingdom.

Wafted by breezes, my white-sailed felucca Slipped through the blueness to where the grim stronghold Of Chillon keeps ever in grateful remembrance The patriot Bonivard, champion of freedom.

The pillar of pain where, writhing in torment, The captives were scourged at cruelty's bidding, Is still to be seen, an eloquent witness.

Tenantless now is the cavernous dungeon Where wretches awaited through darkness unending The dawn of their last and dreaded to-morrow.

Stripped of its horrors, the chamber of torture Echoes no more to the shrieks of its victims, And death's grim abode where agony ended Is free from the crimes that redden its records.

There by the column of stone in the dungeon Where Bonivard lay to pine through the seasons Of six weary years, I mused on his story.

Undaunted by death's ever-threatening shadow, Unconquered though insolent tyranny triumphed, Chilled in the summer and frozen in winter, Famished, neglected and loaded with fetters, Yet borne up within by courage unflinching, Supported by Faith when Hope had departed, Scorning to murmur, he waited with patience.

Morning's faint light through the narrow embrasure, The wandering cry of a sea-mew in freedom Heightened the gloom of his roughly hewn prison, Making a summons to death a deliverance.

Night fell about him in Stygian darkness, While the faint lap of the waters of Leman, Beating the ramparts with madding persistence, Whispered despair in the still isolation.

What were his thoughts when the vault of his prison Rang with glad cries in the glare of the torches?

Breaking the silence, dispelling the shadows That darkened his life and threatened his reason, What were his thoughts at the moment of freedom?

When round him a tempest of pa.s.sion was raging, An unloosened storm of pa.s.sionate feeling, When men incoherent and hoa.r.s.e from the conflict Fought for the honour of breaking his fetters, Leaving him breathless with hearty embraces, Weak and unmanned in the sudden revulsion, Carried away by the flood of emotion, With something unknown that stifled expression, That silenced his voice and heaved in his bosom.

Strong is the spell of the dream-haunted mountains, Ruddy with gold in the glory of sunrise, Purple and silver and blue in the daytime, Tinged by the amethyst splendours of sunset, Gloomy, majestic and dark in the twilight, Mystic by moonlight, ethereal, airy, Changeful and fickle in hues as the opal, Under the mutable lights and the shadows, Ever alluring with subtle attraction.

Far, far away are the waters of Leman Whence I have fled at the call of the mountains.

Here in the valley where rushes a torrent, Constant and cold, be it summer or winter, A village lies hid and hither the climbers, Strangely alike in their eager impatience, Wearing the look of enwrapped expectation, Pause ere they start on their perilous journey.

Hemming me round, the implacable mountains Shut out the world and confine me in durance, Bending my soul to the yoke of their bondage, Dwarfing my self and my little emotions, Waking desire to escape limitations And barriers imposed by narrow horizons.

Rugged, majestic, they tower above me, As lonely and pensive I gaze in the torrent, Wondering now at the summons insistent, No longer in dreams and rovings of fancy, But weighted with impulse, defying resistance, Rousing unrest like a spirit of evil.

So, as I linger awhile in the village, Completely I know each day brings me nearer To what lies beyond, in the regions of silence.

Now it is over. The lights of the village, The children at play, the clink from the smithy, The gurgle and rush of the hurrying torrent, The rattle of wheels, the tinkle of cowbells, The inn's open window whence converse in fragments Floats out with the odours of beer and tobacco, All welcome me back with familiar voices.

Here time moves onward with rhythmic precision: Breakfast and dinner, and bed for the darkness, With Sunday to part one week from another: Spring time and winter, the snow and the sunshine, And sooner or later a cross in the churchyard.

Time lacks proportion away in the mountains.

What is a day or an hour or a lifetime Gauged by the ebb and the flow of the ages Shown in the tidemarks on crags prehistoric?

If, as men say, time is measured by heartbeats, I wandered through years of vivid emotions.

Pelion and Ossa, by arrogant t.i.tans Profanely uplifted to challenge Olympus, Repeated themselves in the blueness above me.

Sunsets and dawns such as glowed on the marshes, Silurian haunts of the early creation, Long ere the age of humanity's advent, Gleamed through the vapours and red exhalations Rising from bottomless pits to encolour Weirdly the matrix, volcanic, primeval, Riven and torn in the birth-throes of Cosmos.

Slippery ledges uneven and narrow, Through rarefied air that maddens the pulses, Treacherous footpaths inviting destruction, Where fear in the heart disorders the senses.

Vertiginate chasms, abysmal, terrific, Unfathomed and sheer with never a foothold, Compelling the gaze with cold fascination.

Stretches of billowy acres of whiteness Dimming the eyes with their endless expanses; Ridges upstanding in ice walls cemented By glacial pressure of slow-moving ma.s.ses.

Caverns with ice shapes, blue-tinted, translucent: Columns and altars and figures fantastic, Imagined in dreams or pictured in fever, Softly illumed by the moonlight's reflection.

There is the haunt of the evil ice maidens, The servants of Death, who lure with their beauty, Who bathe in the stream of the glacier water, The glacial water that flows through the caverns, Silent and deep as the river of Lethe.

These memories hold me. I live in a fever.

The air that I breathe, the influence round me Are charged with a strange and volatile essence That throbs in my veins and quickens my breathing.

Held by the mountains, I languish in bondage Under the masterful sway of their presence.

Restless though weary I dream of their perils, Slipping down chasms with death at the bottom, Or over the desolate ice fields I wander, Hopeless, forgotten and lost in the snowdrifts, Wandering ever past hope of redemption.

Sometimes I swing with a pendulum's measure, Fitfully swayed by the wind o'er a chasm That gapes far below, relentless and cruel, Conscious of all in the terrible moments That pa.s.s till I drop to the doom that is waiting Far in the depths of the yawning creva.s.ses, And wake at the instant supreme of destruction.

To-morrow at dawn I fly from the village Back to the peace of the waters of Leman.

Gone, gone at last, is the morbid obsession!

Gone to the shade in the regions of Limbo.

Far, far away, o'er the waters of Leman, Mistily outlined and faint in the distance, Threatening no longer, the dream-haunted mountains Lazily whisper of rest and contentment.

Softly the plash of the glittering fountain Falls on the night with the scent of mimosa, Mingled with polyglot phrases and laughter, Marking the pause 'twixt a waltz and mazurka.

Soft are the lamps in the Kursaal rotunda Lighting discreetly the hall of lost footsteps Whose gleaming mosaics are painted with garlands, Blossoms exotic, luxuriant, languid, Red as the souls of the people about them, Hinting at pa.s.sions through crimson and purple, Fitting the vogue of this temple of pleasure.

On a divan in the hall where the idlers Promenade slowly, in converse together, I sit all alone in calm contemplation, Hearing the orchestra faint in the distance And the croupier's voice from his chamber seductive, Parrot-like crying in stale iteration, Summons and challenge across the green table.

Keen-eyed old gamesters who prowl round the players, Seeking a pigeon to pluck at their leisure: Black-whiskered barons with blurred reputations Smirking at B. and his girls from Chicago: Swaggering captains at best detrimental: A country-bred youth just come to a fortune, Trying in vain to conceal his amazement: Couples awaiting the Absolute's fiat, Now in pursuit of a flying illusion: Hebrews from Frankfort and bankers from Paris Chatting to ladies resplendent in diamonds; A burgess of London whose wife says: "Disgraceful,"

But lingers to study Parisian fashions: Gamblers inveterate bent to a system, Silent, unheeding, absorbed in their figures: Well-groomed young fellows, light-hearted and careless, Come for the dance and the fun of flirtation, Bright-eyed and merry, unconsciously breathing The poisonous air of sepulchres whited.

Perdita, watchful and guardedly smiling, Trying to lessen the distance between us, Wafts me a sign with a spray of verbena.

Is she an angel, a beast or a demon, Or spirit incarnate that onward is pa.s.sing To higher avatars by long transmigration?

Ah! how it warms one, this human deflection, This touch with familiar follies and foibles, After the limitless s.p.a.ce of the aeons, Out of the measure of time as we know it, Far in the distant and echoless ages, Austere, and untouched by our pa.s.sing emotions, Where I have wandered in lonely remoteness Under the pa.s.sionless spell of the mountains.

Cold and relentless, eternally lasting!

Silent inscriptions in cryptical cipher!

Unbroken record of time since creation, Whose secret is hid from human conception.

How small are the things humanity prizes, The feverish joys of pa.s.sion and pleasure, That pa.s.s like a dream to dusky oblivion!

How short is man's life compared with the ages That frown from the face of the mystical mountains, Far in the blue o'er the waters of Leman.