It seemed a little spot of
death in the green lap of rejoicing life - like that death-spot which
often lies in the human heart - among all seeming flowers, cold and
cheerless, unwarmed by the sunbeam, and unmelted by the ray that
unfolds thousands of blooms around.
Now, I thought, I have read of Alpine flowers leaning their cheeks on
the snows. I wonder if any flowers grow near enough to that snow to
touch it. I mean to go and see. So I went; there, sure enough, my
little fringed purple bell, to which I have given the name of
"suspirium," was growing, not only close to the snow, but in it.
Thus God's grace shining steadily on the waste places of the human
heart, brings up heavenward sighings and aspirations which pierce
through the cold snows of affliction, and tell that there is yet life
beneath.
I climbed up the grassy sides of the peak, flowers to the very top.
There I sat down and looked. This is Alpine solitude. All around me
were these deep, green dells, from which comes up the tinkle of bells,
like the dropping of rain every where It seems to me the air is more
elastic and musical here than below, and gives grace to the commonest
sound. Now I look back along the way we have been travelling. I look
at the strange old cloudy mountains, the Eiger, the Wetterhorn, the
Schreckhorn. A kind of hazy ether floats around them - an indescribable
aerial halo - which no painter ever represents. Who can paint the
air - that vivid blue in which these sharp peaks cut their glittering
images? Of all peaks, the Eiger is the most impressive to me.
[Illustration: _of the sharp pointed Eiger, with mountain goats on a
pinnacle in the foreground._]
It is a gigantic ploughshare of rock, set up against the sky, its
thin, keen, purple blade edged with glittering frost; for so sharp is
its point, that only a dazzling line marks the eternal snow on its
head.
I walked out as far as I could on a narrow summit, and took a last
look. Glaciers! snows! mountains! sunny dells and flowers! all good
by. I am a pilgrim and a stranger.
Already, looking down to the shanty, I see the guide like a hen that
has lost a chicken, shaking her wings, and clucking, and making a
great ado. I could stay here all day. I would like to stay two or
three - to see how it would look at sunrise, at sunset - to lie down in
one of these sunny hollows, and look up into the sky - to shut my eyes
lazily, and open them again, and so let the whole impression _soak
in_, as Mrs. H. used to say.
