13 August 2026
(6 November 2015) We return, after a break for a spooky poem, to Shelley’s masterful “Mont Blanc.” Here is the first half of the second stanza, and we point our readers to Shelley’s incredible use of language to convey multiple sentiments & senses:
Thus thou, Ravine of Arve–dark, deep Ravine–
Thou many-colour’d, many-voiced vale,
Over whose pines, and crags, and caverns sail
Fast cloud-shadows and sunbeams: awful scene,
Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down
From the ice-gulfs that gird his secret throne,
Bursting through these dark mountains like the flame
Of lightning through the tempest;–thou dost lie,
Thy giant brood of pines around thee clinging,
Children of elder time, in whose devotion
The chainless winds still come and ever came
To drink their odours, and their mighty swinging
To hear–an old and solemn harmony;
Thine earthly rainbows stretch’d across the sweep
Of the aethereal waterfall, whose veil
Robes some unsculptur’d image; the strange sleep
Which when the voices of the desert fail
Wraps all in its own deep eternity;
The poet focus shifts to the ravine through which the river runs, and the “pines, crags, and caverns” that overlook this ravine. He recognizes the primeval power of Nature, indications of an older age. Note the he calls the mountains ‘children of an elder time’, drawing our attention to the great age of the natural world, and some much earlier time before we came to ‘civilize’ nature. Here on the slopes of Mont Blanc, that ancient, uncorrupted time is still evident, and further, that elder time and its music are still played out in these mountains. There is a permanence to Nature whose actions, motions, and emotions continue to be played out, as they have for all time, in spite of all we temporary creatures can do! Come back Saturday for another installment of the Poet’s Corner. Good reading!
Clyde B. Northrup 
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