Cloud-piercing Mountains! Chance and Change
More high than you their thrones advance.
Self-vanquished Nature's rockiest range
Gives way before them like the trance
Of one that wakes. From morn to eve
Through fissured clefts her mists make way;
At Night's cold touch they freeze, and cleave
Her crags; and, with a Titan's sway,
Flake off and peel the rotting rocks,
And heap the glacier tide below
With isles of sand and floating blocks,
As leaves on streams when tempests blow.
Lo, thus the great decree all-just,
O Earth, thy mountains hear; and learn
From fire and frost its import — “dust
Thou art; and shalt to dust return.”
He only is Who ever was;
The All-measuring Mind; the Will Supreme.
Rocks, mountains, worlds, like bubbles pass:
God is; the things not God but seem.