Goethe

The Swiss Alps

The Swiss Alps - meaning Summary

Youth and Age Entwined

The poem observes a mountain that was brown yesterday and now wears silver-grey snow, using this sudden weathered change as a compact metaphor for human life. The speaker links the Alps’lteration to the intimate, inevitable overlap of youth and age, suggesting that the passage from one to the other is dreamlike and continuous rather than abrupt. The tone is elegiac and quietly reflective about transience and persistence.

Read Complete Analyses

Yesterday brown was still thy head, as the locks of my loved one, Whose sweet image so dear silently beckons afar. Silver-grey is the early snow to-day on thy summit, Through the tempestuous night streaming fast over thy brow. Youth, alas, throughout life as closely to age is united As, in some changeable dream, yesterday blends with to-day.

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