“Splugen” [poem]
“Splugen” (MS VIII; Poems [1891]; Works [1903])—Ruskin lists this title in his Plan for Continuation of the Account of a Tour on the Continent on the back endpapers of MS VIII. The positioning of this poem in the Plan (presumably as part of a projected composite section to be entitled “Splugen”) reflects the influence of the poet, Samuel Rogers (1763–1855). Ruskinʼs borrowings from Rogersʼs Italy are especially prominent in treating the trope of mountain crossing. See, in the apparatus for the “Account”, Sources and Influences—Rogersʼs Poetry; and see also the contextual glosses for “Passing the Alps”.
In Ruskinʼs Plan, the title “Splugen” is the third in what can be interpreted as a definable cluster, which constructs the experience of crossing the Alps:
While Ruskin did not subdivide his Plan into clusters of titles, his intention is evident in his drafting poems, with titles corresponding to those in the Plan, as an identically ordered sequence in MS VIII. The poem corresponding to the first title in this conjectural cluster, “Passing the Alps”, was drafted elsewhere, in MS IA, g.2, probably prior to the drafts of the other poems in MS VIII; and Ruskin based this poem on Rogersʼs “The Alps” in Italy, applying themes and structure in Rogersʼs poem to his own cluster.


“A little cultivated space / Amid the rocky wilderness” (MS VIII; Poems [1891]; Works [1903])—While Ruskinʼs cousin, Mary Richardson, declared the village of Splügen “a poor place” (Diary of Mary Richardson, 1833, 41), Ruskin represents the village as a pastoral respite from the sublime experience of the Via Mala. In his guidebook to Switzerland, John Murray III treats Splügen in a businesslike manner as “the chief place in the desolate pastoral vale of the Rheinwald. . . . The atmosphere is very chilly here, and barley barely ripens”. The villageʼs economy, Murray explains, depended on serving as a transport hub, “prosper[ing] by the constant passage of goods and travellers to and from Italy. In autumn it is thronged with drovers; large herds of cattle and many horses then cross the Alps for the Milan market” (Murray, Hand‐book for Travellers in Switzerland, 209). According to William Brockedon, the villageʼs “importance” as a “depôt” did not decline owing to the Austrian governmentʼs recent engineering improvements to carriage roads through the Splügen Pass, although prior to the increased flow of self‐sufficient conveyances, the village maintained “some hundreds of horses and mules . . . for the transport of goods” (Brockedon, Illustrations of the Passes of the Alps, vol. 2, no. 9, p. 9). None of these conditions is evident in Johnʼs poem, in which the only sign of droversʼ herds is a bucolic “few cattle straying”.


“a little spring / Down the smooth crag came glistering” (MS VIII; Poems [1891]; Works [1903])—The Oxford English Dictionary defines “glister” as “a bright light, brilliance, lustre” (“glister, v”., OED Online, accessed 9 November 2014). Ruskinʼs early acquaintance with this word likely came through Maria Edgeworthʼs Harry and Lucy Concluded. On a bright morning when Harry and Lucyʼs family sets forth from home on a tour, the narrator quotes Milton: “Herb, tree, fruit, and flower / Glistering with dew”. In Paradise Lost, the line occurs as part of Eveʼs sonnet‐like “love song”, as Barbara Kiefer Lewalski calls the eighteen‐line lyric, in Eve and Adamʼs book 4 eclogue: “pleasant the Sun / When first on this delightful Land he spreads / His orient Beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flowʼr, / Glistʼring with dew” (4:642–45, in Milton, Complete Poems and Major Prose, ed. Hughes, 293; and see Maria Edgeworth, Harry and Lucy Concluded, 1:200; and Lewalski, Paradise Lost and the Rhetoric of Literary Forms, 187–88). The word is also used often by Walter Scott.


“No, on, the peaceful bourne is past / The rocks around are closing fast, / Higher and higher towards the heaven / Betwixt the cliffs our road is riven, / Or twining round the hill side bare / With many a bend” (MS VIII; Poems [1891]; Works [1903])—The climb from the village of Splügen to the mountain pass, as Brockedon explains, began where “the road . . . abruptly leaves the village by a covered bridge across the Rhine, and ascends the mountain directly from the river,” rising “by a succession of zig‐zags, [to] the greatest elevation, which is 6500 English feet above the level of the sea.” At the summit, “unlike the col of the Bernardin”, the road reaches “a narrow crest whence the road rapidly descends” (Brockedon, Illustrations of the Passes of the Alps, vol. 2, no. 9, pp. 9, 13).


“And round, beneath, beside there grew, / The Alpine roses heathery hue” (MS VIII; Poems [1891]; Works [1903])—Rhododendrum ferrugineum, or Rusty‐leaved Rhododendrum. In the Library Edition, the editors remark that “Ruskin never lost his particular affection for this flower”, and refer the reader to the preface to the second edition (1865) of Sesame and Lilies. In the preface, a recent fatal climbing accident suffered by members of the Alpine Club leads Ruskin to relate an anecdote about ill‐behaved youths who trampled a bed of Alpine roses that he was drawing, prompting a reflection on the difference between reverence for beauty and love of excitement (Ruskin, Works, 18:27).