peak quotes

I emerged at last, stumbled a few steps in the mud and then I saw it: an ethereal mountain emerging from a tossing sea of clouds framed between two dark barracksa massive, blue-black tooth of sheer rock inlaid with azure glaciers, austere yet floating fairy-like on the near horizon. It was the first17,000-foot peak I had ever seen. I stood gazing until the vision disappeared among the shifting cloud banks. For hours afterwards I remained spell-bound. I had definitely fallen in love.

- Felice Benuzzi
  No Picnic on Mount Kenya.

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star'd at the Pacificand all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

-John Keats
  'On First Looking into Chapman's Homer', l.9^14. (Published in The Examiner 1816.)