Songs and Sonnets (Coleman)/On Mount Pilatus

by Helena Jane Coleman

ON MOUNT PILATUS.

 

I stood on Mount Pilatus, freshly crowned
In all the splendor of new-fallen snow,
And heard the bells of myriad flocks below,
Filling the valleys with mysterious sound:
Enchanting cadences, that lingering wound
Among the dreaming hills, elusive, slow,
And bearing in the liquid ebb and flow
An elemental music, faint, profound.

And I have wondered if the joy and pain,
The happy laughter and the anguished sighs,
So strangely blended in our lives, attain
Consistency and sweetness as they rise,
And, woven to one pure, ethereal strain,
Make harmony beyond the tranquil skies.