On Being Given a Piece of Edelweiss Before Visiting Switzerland
THINE everlasting mountains and their snows
And awful silence, floweret, know I not;
I have not wandered to thy native spot
Among the crags, but oft as I repose,
Musing by winter fire at daylight’s close,
5
In fancy have I viewed those depths of sky
And infinite clouded crags, while fronting high,
Peak upon peak, the eternal Alps uprose.
Mysterious power, God-planted in the soul,
That thus transcends all space and the confined
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Limits of sense, Imagination hail!
Pledge art thou of that life when death shall roll
Back our flesh prison-bars, and the freed mind
Shall grasp the giant truths behind the veil.
