A stillness of the mountain air and the Dent Du Midi outside of Chalet Martin stand commanding against the veil. Our time in Switzerland draws to a close and though the wayfarers will see America in less than a week, their hearts transcend the Chamonix’s peaks, which they saw yesterday. As we sat beside the Arve, the words of Shelley and Coleridge came to life as they were read aloud by members of our group. The landscape was a perfect frame around unassailable Mont Blanc with the town’s buildings trying—to no avail—to cover the majesty. Into my mind whistles Coleridge’s words, “ ’God! God!’ the torrents, like a shout of nations/Utter. The ice-plain bursts, and answers ‘God!/ ‘God!’ sings the meadow-streams with gladsome voice/ And pine-grooves, with their soft and soul-like sound/ The silent snow-mass, loos’ing thunders ‘God!’ “ (56-60). It is hard to even fathom our own minute stature in the face of the greatness of the mountain.
As we journey ahead to our final weekend, many of my friends head to Veince, but I can’t bare to leave Switzerland. The open-air markets of Vevey, the smooth jazz of Montreax, and tracking Hemingway through the streets of Lausanne—those places will ease my soul surely!
As I end my journey and my blog before heading to Geneva, I can only think about Childe Harold and his pilgrimage. The weary Harold, a burdened traveler, enters Switzerland and finds hope in rejuvenation for the sublimity of everything that surrounds him. Things come full circle.
It seems so long ago that we landed in Geneva. Byron’s work personifies the refreshment and rejuvenation that the mountain air can offer, and have offered, to weary travelers; and my mind can only race ahead to the long train ride that will carry me back to America. I can already see myself sitting on the train getting my last look at Lac Leman, and Byron’s words haunt me again: “ Clear, placid Leman! Thy contrasted lake/ With the wild world I dwelt in is a thing/ which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake/ Earth’s troubled waters for a purer spring.” (CHP, III, LXXXV)
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