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Magical Mountains - On Explore

# 80 On Explore, 17th July, 2009.

 

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Oh, gaze ye on the firmament! a hundred clouds in motion,

Up-piled in the immense sublime beneath the winds' commotion,

Their unimagined shapes accord:

Under their waves at intervals flame a pale levin through,

As if some giant of the air amid the vapors drew

A sudden elemental sword.

 

Then mounts a palace, then the air vibrates--the vision flees.

Confounded to its base, the fearful cloudy edifice

Ruins immense in mounded wrack;

Afar the fragments strew the sky, and each envermeiled cone

Hangeth, peak downward, overhead, like mountains overthrown

When the earthquake heaves its hugy back.

 

O contemplate the heavens! Whenas the vein-drawn day dies pale,

In every season, every place, gaze through their every veil?

With love that has not speech for need!

Beneath their solemn beauty is a mystery infinite:

If winter hue them like a pall, or if the summer night

Fantasy them starre brede.

 

From 'A Sunset' by Victor Hugo

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Uploaded on July 17, 2009
Taken on December 25, 2005