Part 6 — THE STATUE IN THE SNOW.
Reading edition
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BY J. BAYARD TAYLOR.
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Numb and chill the Savoyard wandered
By the banks of frozen Seine,
Oft, to cheer his sinking spirit,
Singing low some mountain strain.
But, beside the wintry river,
Rose the songs of green Savoy,
Sadder than ’mid Alpine valleys,
Sung by many a shepherd boy!
From the bleak and distant Vosges
Swept the snowy whirlwind down,
Flinging wide its shifting mantle
Over slope and meadow brown.
Like a corpse, the silent landscape
Lay all stark and icy there,
And a chill and ghostly terror
Seemed to load the leaden air.
Still that shivering boy went forward,
Though his heart within him died,
When the dreary night was closing
Dull around the desert wide.
Sobbing wild in lonely sorrow,
On his numb cheek froze the tear;
And his footstep, faint and weary,
Heeded not the gathering fear!
Through the desolate northern twilight,
To his home-sick pining, rose
Visions of the flashing glaciers,
Lifted in sublime repose.
Horns of Alp-herds rang in welcome,
And his mother kissed her boy!—
Back his bounding heart was hurried
From the vales of dear Savoy!
For, amid the sinking darkness,
Colder, chillier, blew the snows,
Till but faint and moaning whispers
From his stiffening lips arose.
Then beside the pathway kneeling,
Folded he his freezing hands,
While the blinding snows were drifted
Like the desert’s lifted sands.
As in many an old cathedral,
Curtained round with solemn gloom,
One may see a marble cherub
Kneeling on a marble tomb!
With his face to heaven upturning,
For the dead he seems to pray,
While the organ o’er him thunders,
And the incense curls away!
Thus he knelt, all pale and icy,
When the storm at midnight passed,
And the silver lamps of heaven
Burned above the pausing blast.
In that starry-roofed cathedral
Knelt the cherub form in prayer,
While the smoke from snowy censers
Drifted upward through the air.
Though no organ’s grand vibration
Shook the winds that lingered near,
Think ye not the hymns of angels
Trembled on his dying ear?