SUNRISE ON THE ALPS[30]
VOLUME I, SECTION 3, PART 2, CHAPTER 4
Stand upon the peak of some isolated mountain at daybreak, when the
night mists first rise from off the plains, and watch their white and
lake-like fields, as they float in level bays and winding gulfs about
the islanded summits of the lower hills, untouched yet by more than
dawn, colder and more quiet than a windless sea under the moon of
midnight; watch when the first sunbeam is sent upon the silver
channels, how the foam of their undulating surface parts and passes
away, and down under their depths the glittering city and green
pasture lie like Atlantis,[31] between the white paths of winding
rivers; the flakes of light falling every moment faster and broader
among the starry spires, as the wreathed surges break and vanish above
them, and the confused crests and ridges of the dark hills shorten
their grey shadows upon the plain.... Wait a little longer, and you
shall see those scattered mists rallying in the ravines, and floating
up towards you, along the winding valleys, till they crouch in quiet
masses, iridescent with the morning light,[32] upon the broad breasts
of the higher hills, whose leagues of massy undulation will melt back
and back into that robe of material light, until they fade away, lost
in its lustre, to appear again above, in the serene heaven, like a
wild, bright, impossible dream, foundationless and inaccessible, their
very bases vanishing in the unsubstantial and mocking blue of the deep
lake below.
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