How awful, yet how
beautiful!
Longfellow
Yet are they not forgotten;
Beneficent Nature sends the mists to feed them.
ELSIE.
See yonder little cloud, that, borne aloft
So tenderly by the wind, floats fast away
Over the snowy peaks! It seems to me
The body of St. Catherine, borne by angels!
PRINCE HENRY.
Thou art St. Catherine, and invisible angels
Bear thee across these chasms and precipices,
Lest thou shouldst dash thy feet against a stone!
ELSIE.
Would I were borne unto my grave, as she was,
Upon angelic shoulders! Even now
I seem uplifted by them, light as air!
What sound is that?
PRINCE HENRY.
The tumbling avalanches!
ELSIE.
How awful, yet how beautiful!
PRINCE HENRY.
These are
The voices of the mountains! Thus they ope
Their snowy lips, and speak unto each other,
In the primeval language, lost to man.
ELSIE.
What land is this that spreads itself beneath us?
PRINCE HENRY.
Italy! Italy!
ELSIE.
Land of the Madonna!
How beautiful it is! It seems a garden
Of Paradise!
PRINCE HENRY.
Nay, of Gethsemane
To thee and me, of passion and of prayer!
Yet once of Paradise.
