Postcard from Mont Blanc

These Alps are clothed with beauty,
Cloaked in glistening, sun-drenched white
And softly shadowed folds of grey;
Embroidered with rock and fir
And myriad jewelled sparkles of light.

These Alps are clothed with vastness.
They rise steep and sheer from the Chamonix Valley,
Grand, awesome, rugged, powerful, immense,
With peaks that thrust into the sky,
Vast cliffs, ridged with ribbons of snow,
Rising to a tooth point and then falling sheer away;
Cliffs aproned with whiteness of snow
And hemmed with green and snow-dusted fir.

These Alps are clothed with glory.
The sun glints blue on Glacier des Bossons;
Snow wisps and floats from high peaks,
Descends in ribbons to the valley floor
Or lies piled in great, fleecy blankets
On the high, white mountain sides.

These Alps are clothed with grandeur.
Above them all stands the most grand,
The mighty peak itself,
Mont Blanc, 4810 metres of rock and snow and cliff,
Standing like some vast sentinel
That guards, surveys and controls
This entire world of indescribable beauty,
Which itself stands imposingly vast over
The Liliputian world of the valley below.