Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 4. TANZBODELI, by EDWARD CARPENTER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 4. TANZBODELI, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: High on a rock that juts above the lauterbrunnen valley
Last Line: Forming a circle, dance—till the mountains too wheel round us.
Subject(s): Alps; Mountains; Tanzbodeli (mountain), Switzerland; Hills; Downs (great Britain)


HIGH on a rock that juts above the Lauterbrunnen valley,
Seven thousand feet in air, a little floor of grass,
Even and smooth, with flowers—
The little dancing-ground, they call it (and have called, how many
centuries?)—
And then across the gorge, and again some seven thousand feet higher,
In slopes of rock and ice, the Jungfrau towering over,
Proud and magnificent; and in her train seven mountains—
(Roth-thalhorn, Gletscherhorn, Ebne Fluh, Mittaghorn, Grosshorn, Breithorn
and Tschingelhorn)—
Standing there like a wall and sending their glaciers to the valley.

[And far behind the wall, far miles and miles, but invisible from here,
Great rivers of ice between the glistening black and scarred crags
Flow, tossing and twisted, with sea-green escarpments and fissures, and
scaly snaky moraines, and glittering snow-fields above them, sharp on the dark
blue sky,
All stretching, far as the eye may see, in endless silence,
Save for the fitful rattle of falling rocks, or muffled roar of an
avalanche.]
But at the end of the train, and closing it and the valley,
Rises a huge bare cliff, the frowning G'spaltenhorn,
Diabolic and dark, an inferno of crags and pinnacles.

This on one side; on the other the landscape opens
To lower valleys and pastures—the huts of Gimmelwald and Mürren,
Lying serene in the sunlight, with herds of cows just visible,
And the blue-vista'd gorge of Lauterbrunnen running down to the distant
hills of the twin lakes,
And tiny villages and towns, half seen and half imagined,
All folded in light and glory—as the peaks above are folded.

And there below us, in the huts of the upper pastures, the herdsmen gather
and milk the cows, and in their great cauldrons warm the milk, and strain and
press the cheeses;
Staying a few weeks in one spot till the feed is exhausted, and then
leading the tinkling-belled herd by precipitous paths to other huts and
pastures,
All summer long, till the autumnal return to the lowlands;
And in the little chalets the daily life goes on, with knitting and
spinning and beating of flax, and storage of winter fuel and fodder;
And men with small short scythes mow the slopes of grass almost too steep
to stand on, or carry their heavy wooden brantes of milk, braced to their
shoulders, down the mountain-bases;
And for a brief season the stream of visitors arrives, and the hotels wake
from sleep, and distant music is heard;
And guides and climbers sally forth with lanterns in the dark, and are glad
if they may remain for a few minutes at early morning in the thin icy wind of
some silent summit;
And even tiny invisible trains attempt to ascend the unimaginable
mountains.

But here on this little palm of grass, Earth's hand uplifted,
All is the same as though the centuries moved not;
And the peaks stand round and wreathe themselves in clouds, and take the
colors and the lights of morning and evening;
And the moon sails, and an occasional eagle, overhead;
And the valleys plunge below in depths and darks invisible;
And the butterflies and flowers quiver and leap in the light and living
air;
And we, in our turn, on the little dancing-ground of centuries,
Forming a circle, dance—till the mountains too wheel round us.





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