strange reflection upon the clouds; an everlasting light of calm Aurora
in the north. Then, higher and higher around the approaching darkness of
the plain, rise the central chains, not as on the Switzer's side, a
recognizable group and following of successive and separate hills, but a
wilderness of jagged peaks, cast in passionate and fierce profusion
along the circumference of heaven; precipice behind precipice, and gulf
beyond gulf, filled with the flaming of the sunset, and forming mighty
channels for the flowings of the clouds, which roll up against them out
of the vast Italian plain, forced together by the narrowing crescent,
and breaking up at last against the Alpine wall in towers of spectral
spray; or sweeping up its ravines with long moans of complaining
thunder. Out from between the cloudy pillars, as they pass, emerge
forever the great battlements of the memorable and perpetual hills:
Viso, with her shepherd-witnesses to ancient faith; Rocca-Melone, the
highest place of Alpine pilgrimage;[61] Iseran, who shed her burial
sheets of snow about the march of Hannibal; Cenis, who shone with her
glacier light on the descent of Charlemagne; Paradiso, who watched with
her opposite crest the stoop of the French eagle to Marengo; and
underneath all these, lying in her soft languor, this tender Italy,
lapped in dews of sleep, or more than sleep--one knows not if it is
trance, from which morning shall yet roll the blinding mists away, or if
the fair shadows of her quietude are indeed the shades of purple death.
And, lifted a little above this solemn plain, and looking beyond it to
its snowy ramparts, vainly guardian, stands this palace dedicate to
pleasure, the whole legend of Italy's past history written before it by
the finger of God, written as with an iron pen upon the rock forever, on
all those fronting walls of reproachful Alp; blazoned in gold of
lightning upon the clouds that still open and close their unsealed
scrolls in heaven; painted in purple and scarlet upon the mighty missal
pages of sunset after sunset, spread vainly before a nation's eyes for a
nation's prayer. So stands this palace of pleasure; desolate as it
deserves--desolate in smooth corridor and glittering chamber--desolate
in pleached walk and planted bower--desolate in that worst and bitterest
abandonment which leaves no light of memory. No ruins are here of walls
rent by war, and falling above their defenders into mounds of graves: no
remnants are