Higher there, higher, far from the ways, <br />from the farms and the valleys, beyond the trees, <br />beyond the hills and the grasses’ haze, <br />far from the herd-trampled tapestries, <br />you discover a sombre pool in the deep <br />that a few bare snow-covered mountains form. <br />The lake, in light’s, and night’s, sublime sleep, <br />is never disturbed in its silent storm. <br />In that mournful waste, to the unsure ear, <br />come faint drawn-out sounds, more dead than the bell, <br />of some far-off cow, the echoes unclear, <br />as it grazes the slope, of a distant dell. <br />On those hills where the wind effaces all signs, <br />on those glaciers, fired by the sun’s pure light, <br />on those rocks, where dizziness threatens the mind, <br />in that lake’s vermilion presage of night, <br />under my feet, and above my head, <br />silence, that makes you wish to escape; <br />that eternal silence, of the mountainous bed <br />of motionless air, where everything waits. <br />You would say that the sky, in its loneliness, <br />gazed at itself in the glass, and, up there, <br />the mountains listened, in grave watchfulness <br />to the mystery nothing that’s human can hear. <br />And when, by chance, a wandering cloud <br />darkens the silent lake, moving by, <br />you might think that you saw some spirit’s robe, <br />or else its clear shadow, travelling, over the sky.<br /><br />Charles Baudelaire<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/incompatibility/
