The unclouded sunsets and sunrises
which often follow one another in September in the Alps, have
something terrible. They produce a satiety of splendour, and oppress
the mind with a sense of perpetuity. I remember spending such a season
in one of the Oberland valleys, high up above the pine-trees, in
a little chalet. Morning after morning I awoke to see the sunbeams
glittering on the Eiger and the Jungfrau; noon after noon the
snow-fields blazed beneath a steady fire; evening after evening they
shone like beacons in the red light of the setting sun. Then peak by
peak they lost the glow; the soul passed from them, and they stood
pale yet weirdly garish against the darkened sky. The stars came out,
the moon shone, but not a cloud sailed over the untroubled heavens.
Thus day after day for several weeks there was no change, till I was
seized with an overpowering horror of unbroken calm. I left the valley
for a time; and when I returned to it in wind and rain, I found that
the partial veiling of the mountain heights restored the charm which
I had lost and made me feel once more at home. The landscape takes a
graver tone beneath the mist that hides the higher peaks, and
comes drifting, creeping, feeling, through the pines upon their
slopes--white, silent, blinding vapour-wreaths around the sable
spires. Sometimes the cloud descends and blots out everything. Again
it lifts a little, showing cottages and distant Alps beneath its
skirts.
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