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STANZA S FRO M TH E GRAND E CHARTREUS E / 136 9 35Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies4 clash by night. ca.1851 1867
Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse1
Through Alpine meadows soft-suffused
With rain, where thick the crocus blows,
Past the dark forges long disused,
The mule track from Saint Laurent goes.
5 The bridge is crossed, and slow we ride,
Through forest, up the mountainside.
The autumnal evening darkens round,
The wind is up, and drives the rain;
While, hark! far down, with strangled sound
io Doth the Dead Guier's2 stream complain,
Where that wet smoke, among the woods,
Over his boiling cauldron broods.
Swift rush the spectral vapors white
Past limestone scars0 with ragged pines, cliffs
15 Showing?then blotting from our sight!?
Halt?through the cloud-drift something shines!
High in the valley, wet and drear,
The huts of Courrerie appear.
Strike leftward! cries our guide; and higher
20 Mounts up the stony forest way.
At last the encircling trees retire;
Look! through the showery twilight grey
What pointed roofs are these advance??
A palace of the Kings of France?
25 Approach, for what we seek is here!
Alight, and sparely sup, and wait
4. Perhaps alluding to conflicts in Arnold's own It was established in 1084 by Saint Bruno, founder time such as occurred during the revolutions of of the Carthusians (line 30), whose austere regi1848 in Europe, or at the Siege of Rome by the men of solitary contemplation, fasting, and reli- French in 1849 (the poem's date of composition is gious exercises (lines 37?44) had remained unknown, although generally assumed to be virtually unchanged for centuries. Arnold visited 1851). But the passage also refers back to another the site on September 7, 1851, accompanied by his battle, one that occurred more than two thousand bride. His account may be compared with that by years earlier when an Athenian army was attempt-William Wordsworth (Prelude [1850] 6.414-88), ing an invasion of Sicily at nighttime. As this 'night who had made a similar visit in 1790. battle' was described by the ancient Greek histo-2. The Guiers Mort River flows down from the rian Thucydides in his History of the Pelopottnesian monastery and joins the Guiers Vif in the valley War (7.44). the invaders became confused by dark- below; in French, Mort and Vif mean 'dead' and ness and slaughtered many of their own men. 'alive,' respectively. Wordsworth speaks of the two Hence 'ignorant armies.' rivers as 'the sister streams of Life and Death.' 1. A monastery situated high in the French Alps.
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137 0 / MATTHEW ARNOLD
For rest in this outbuilding near;
Then cross the sward and reach that gate.
Knock; pass the wicket!0 Thou art come gate
so To the Carthusians' world-famed home. The silent courts, where night and day
Into their stone-carved basins cold
The splashing icy fountains play?
The humid corridors behold!
35 Where, ghostlike in the deepening night,
Cowled forms brush by in gleaming white. The chapel, where no organ's peal
Invests the stern and naked prayer?
With penitential cries they kneel
