how close the air of valleys, and how close

the teeming little life that harbors there!

68for me, i will climb mountains. up and up,

higher and higher, till i pant for breath

in that thin clearness. still? there is no sound

nor memory of sound upon these heights.

ah! the great sunlight! the caressing sky,

the beauty, and the stillness, and the peace!

i see my pathway clear for miles below;

see where i fell, and set a friendly sign

to warn some other of the danger there.

the green small world is wide below me spread.

the great small world! some things look large and fair

which, in their midst, i could not even see;

and some look small which used to terrify.

blessed these heights of freedom, wisdom, rest!

i will go higher yet.

a sea of cloud

rolls soundless waves between me and the world.

this is the zone of everlasting snows,

and the sweet silence of the hills below

is song and laughter to the silence here.

great fields, huge peaks, long awful slopes of snow.

alone, triumphant, man above the world,

i stand among these white eternities.

sheer at my feet

sink the unsounded, cloud-encumbered gulfs;

and shifting mists now veil and now reveal

the unknown fastnesses above me yet.

i am alone—above all life—sole king

of these white wastes. how pitiful and small

becomes the outgrown world! i reign supreme,

and in this utter stillness and wide peace

look calmly down upon the universe.

surely that crest has changed! that pile of cloud

that covers half the sky, waves like a robe!

that large and gentle wind

is like the passing of a presence here!

see how yon massive mist-enshrouded peak

is like the shape of an unmeasured foot,—

the figure with the stars!

ah! what is this? it moves, lifts, bends, is gone!

with what a shocking sense of littleness—

a reeling universe that changes place,

and falls to new relation over me—

i feel the unseen presence of the gods!