As

maids

Tend the small harvest of their garden glades;
Or stops the solemn mountain-shades to view
Stretch o'er the pictured mirror broad and blue,
And track the yellow lights from steep to steep,
up the opposing hills they slowly creep.
Aloft, here, half a village shines, arrayed
In golden light; half hides itself in shade:
While, from amid the darkened roofs, the spire,
Restlessly flashing, seems to mount like fire:
There, all unshaded, blazing forests throw
Rich golden verdure on the lake below.
Slow glides the sail along the illumined shore,
And steals into the shade the lazy oar;
Soft bosoms breathe around contagious sighs,
And amorous music on the water dies.

How blest, delicious scene! the eye that

illume

To every charm, and last and chief to you,
Ye lovely maidens that in noontide shade
To all that binds the soul in powerless trance,
Rest near your little plots of wheaten glade;
Lip-dewing song, and ringlet-tossing dance;
Where sparkling eyes and breaking smiles.
The sylvan cabin's lute-enlivened gloom.
-Alas! the very murmur of the streams
Breathes o'er the failing soul voluptuous
While Slavery, forcing the sunk mind to dwell
dreams,
On joys that might disgrace the captive's cell,
Her shameless timbrel shakes on Como's marge,
And lures from bay to bay the vocal barge.

Yet are thy softer arts with power indued
To soothe and cheer the poor man's solitude.
By silent cottage-doors, the peasant's home
Left vacant for the day, I loved to roam.
But once I pierced the mazes of a wood
In which a cabin undeserted stood;
There an old man an olden measure scanned

On a rude viol touched with withered hand.
As lambs or fawns in April clustering lie
Under a hoary oak's thin canopy,
Stretched at his feet, with stedfast upward eye
His children's children listened to the sound;
A Hermit with his family around!

But let us hence; for fair Locarno smiles Embowered in walnut slopes and citron isles: Or seek at eve the banks of Tusa's stream, Where, 'mid dim towers and woods, her waters gleam.

From the bright wave, in solemn gloom, retire
The dull-red steeps, and, darkening still, aspire
To where afar rich orange lustres glow
Round undistinguished clouds, and rocks, and

snow:

Or, led where Via Mala's chasms confine
The indignant waters of the infant Rhine,
Hang o'er the abyss, whose else impervious
gloom

His burning eyes with fearful light illume.

The mind condemned, without reprieve, to go O'er life's long deserts with its charge of woe, With sad congratulation joins the train Where beasts and men together o'er the plain Move on-a mighty caravan of pain: Hope, strength, and courage, social suffering brings,

Freshening the wilderness with shades and springs.

-There be whose lot far otherwise is cast:
Sole human tenant of the piny waste,
By choice or doom a gipsy wanders here,
A nursling babe her only comforter;
Lo, where she sits beneath yon shaggy rock,
A cowering shape half hid in curling smoke!

When lightning among clouds and mountain

snows

Predominates, and darkness comes and goes, And the fierce torrent at the flashes broad Starts, like a horse, beside the glaring roadShe seeks a covert from the battering shower In the roofed bridge; the bridge, in that dread hour,

Itself all trembling at the torrent's power.

Nor is she more at ease on some still night, When not a star supplies the comfort of its light;

Only the waning moon hangs dull and red
Above a melancholy mountain's head,
Then sets. In total gloom the Vagrant sighs,
Stoops her sick head, and shuts her weary
eyes;

Or on her fingers counts the distant clock,
Or, to the drowsy crow of midnight cock,
Listens, or quakes while from the forest's gulf
Howls near and nearer yet the famished wolf.

From the green vale of Urseren smooth and wide

Descend we now, the maddened Reuss our guide;
By rocks that, shutting out the blessed day,
Cling tremblingly to rocks as loose as they;
By cells upon whose image, while he prays,
The kneeling peasant scarcely dares to gaze;
By many a votive death-cross planted near,
And watered duly with the pious tear,
That faded silent from the upward eye
Unmoved with each rude form of peril nigh;
Fixed on the anchor left by Him who saves
Alike in whelming snows, and roaring waves.

But soon a peopled region on the sight
Opens-a little world of calm delight;
Where mists, suspended on the expiring gale,
Spread roof-like o'er the deep secluded vale,
And beams of evening slipping in between,
Gently illuminate a sober scene:-
Here, on the brown wood-cottages they sleep,
There, over rock or sloping pasture creep.
On as we journey, in clear view displayed,
The still vale lengthens underneath its shade
Of low-hung vapour: on the freshened mead
The green light sparkles;-the dim bowers

recede.

While pastoral pipes and streams the landscape lull,

And bells of passing mules that tinkle dull,
In solemn shapes before the admiring eye
Dilated hang the misty pines on high,
Huge convent domes with pinnacles and towers,
And antique castles seen through gleamy
showers.

From such romantic dreams, my soul, awake!
To sterner pleasure, where, by Uri's lake
In Nature's pristine majesty outspread,
Winds neither road nor path for foot to tread :
The rocks rise naked as a wall, or stretch
Far o'er the water, hung with groves of beech;
Aerial pines from loftier steeps ascend,
Nor stop but where creation seems to end.
Yet here and there, if 'mid the savage scene
Appears a scanty plot of smiling green,
Up from the lake a zigzag path will creep
To reach a small wood-hut hung boldly on the
steep.

--Before those thresholds (never can they know
The face of traveller passing to and fro,)
No peasant leans upon his pole, to tell

For whom at morning tolled the funeral bell;
Their watch-dog ne'er his angry bark foregoes,
Touched by the beggar's moan of human woes;
The shady porch ne'er offered a cool seat
To pilgrims overcome by summer's heat.

Yet thither the world's business finds its way
At times, and tales unsought beguile the day,
And there are those fond thoughts which
Solitude,

However stern, is powerless to exclude.

There doth the maiden watch her lover's sail
Approaching, and upbraid the tardy gale;
At midnight listens till his parting oar,
And its last echo, can be heard no more.

And what if ospreys, cormorants, herons cry,
Amid tempestuous vapours driving by,
Or hovering over wastes too bleak to rear
That common growth of earth, the foodful ear;
Where the green apple shrivels on the spray,
And pines the unripened pear in summer's
kindliest ray;

Contentment shares the desolate domain
With Independence, child of high Disdain.
Exulting 'mid the winter of the skies,
Shy as the jealous chamois, Freedom flies,
And grasps by fits her sword, and often eyes;
And sometimes, as from rock to rock she bounds,
The Patriot nymph starts at imagined sounds,
And, wildly pausing, oft she hangs aghast,
Whether some old Swiss air hath checked her
haste

Or thrill of Spartan fife is caught between the blast.

Swoln with incessant rains from hour to hour,
All day the deepening floods a murmur pour :
The sky is veiled, and every cheerful sight:
Dark is the region as with coming night;
But what a sudden burst of overpowering light!
Triumphant on the bosom of the storm,
Glances the wheeling eagle's glorious form!
Eastward, in long perspective glittering, shine
The wood-crowned cliffs that o'er the lake
recline;

Those lofty cliffs a hundred streams unfold,
At once to pillars turned that flame with gold:
The west, that burns like one dilated sun,
Behind his sail the peasant shrinks, to shun
A crucible of mighty compass, felt
By mountains, glowing till they seem to melt.

But, lo! the boatman, ovarawed, before
The pictured fane of Tell suspends his oar;
Confused the Marathonian tale appears,
While his eyes sparkle with heroic tears.
And who, that walks where men of ancient days
Have wrought with godlike arm the deeds of
praise

Feels not the spirit of the place control,
Or rouse and agitate his labouring soul?
Or wild Aosta lulled by Alpine rills,
Say, who, by thinking on Canadian hills,

On Zutphen's plain or on that highland dell, Through which rough Garry cleaves his way, can tell

What high resolves exalt the tenderest thought
Where breathed the gale that caught Wolfe's
Of him whom passion rivets to the spot,
happiest sigh,

And the last sunbeam fell on Bayard's eye;
Where bleeding Sidney from the cup retired,
And glad Dundee in "faint huzzas "expired?
But now with other mind I stand alone
Upon the summit of this naked cone,
And watch the fearless chamois-hunter chase
His prey, through tracts abrupt of desolate

Thro' worlds where Life, and Voice, and Motion sleep;

Where silent Hours their death-like sway

extend,

Save when the avalanche breaks loose, to rend
Its way with uproar, till the ruin, drowned
In some dense wood or gulf of snow profound,
Mocks the dull ear of Time with deaf abortive
sound.

—'Tis his, while wandering on from height to height,

To see a planet's pomp and steady light
In the least star of scarce-appearing night;
While the pale moon moves near him, on the
bound

Of ether, shining with diminished round,
And far and wide the icy summits blaze,
Rejoicing in the glory of her rays:
To him the day-star glitters small and bright,
Shorn of its beams, insufferably white,
And he can look beyond the sun, and view
Those fast-receding depths of sable blue
Flying till vision can no more pursue!
-At once bewildering mists around him close,
And cold and hunger are his least of woes;
The Demon of the snow, with angry roar
Descending, shuts for aye his prison door.
Soon with despair's whole weight his spirits sink;
Bread has he none, the snow must be his drink;
And, ere his eyes can close upon the day,
The eagle of the Alps o'ershades her prey.

Now couch thyself where, heard with fear afar,

Thunders through echoing pines the headlong Aar;

Or rather stay to taste the mild delights

Of pensive Underwalden's pastoral heights.
-Is there who 'mid these awful wilds has seen
The native Genii walk the mountain green?
Or heard, while other worlds their charms
reveal,

Soft music o'er the aërial summit steal?
While o'er the desert, answering every close,
Rich steam of sweetest perfume comes and

goes.

-And sure there is a secret Power that reigns
Here, where no trace of man the spot profanes,
Nought but the chalets, flat and bare, on high
Suspended 'mid the quiet of the sky;

Or distant herds that pasturing upward creep,
And, not untended, climb the dangerous steep.
How still! no irreligious sound or sight
Rouses the soul from her severe delight.
An idle voice the sabbath region fills
Of Deep that calls to Deep across the hills,
And with that voice accords the soothing sound
Of drowsy bells, for ever tinkling round;
Faint wail of eagle melting into blue
Beneath the cliffs, and pine-wood's steady
sugh;*

The solitary heifer's deepened low;

Or rumbling, heard remote, of falling snow. All motions, sounds, and voices, far and nigh, Blend in a music of tranquillity;

Save when, a stranger seen below, the boy Shouts from the echoing hills with savage joy.

When, from the sunny breast of open seas, And bays with myrtle fringed, the southern breeze

Comes on to gladden April with the sight
Of green isles widening on each snow-clad
height;

When shouts and lowing herds the valley fill,
And louder torrents stun the noon-tide hill,
The pastoral Swiss begin the cliffs to scale,
Leaving to silence the deserted vale;
And like the Patriarchs in their simple age
Move, as the verdure leads, from stage to stage;
High and more high in summer's heat they go,
And hear the rattling thunder far below;
Or steal beneath the mountains, half-deterred,
Where huge rocks tremble to the bellowing
herd.

One I behold who, 'cross the foaming flood, Leaps with a bound of graceful hardihood; Another high on that green ledge; he gained The tempting spot with every sinew strained; And downward thence a knot of grass he throws,

Food for his beasts in time of winter snows.
-Far different life from what Tradition hoar
Transmits of happier lot in times of yore!
From out the rocks, the wild bees' safe abode:
Then Summer lingered long; and honey flowed
Continual waters welling cheered the waste,
And plants were wholesome, now of deadly

taste:

Nor Winter yet his frozen stores had piled, Usurping where the fairest herbage smiled: Nor Hunger driven the herds from pastures bare,

To climb the treacherous cliffs for scanty fare. Then the milk-thistle flourished through the land,

And forced the full-swoln udder to demand,
Thrice every day, the pail and welcome hand.
Thus does the father to his children tell
Of banished bliss, by fancy loved too well.
Alas! that human guilt provoked the rod
Of angry Nature to avenge her God.
Still, Nature, ever just, to him imparts
Joys only given to uncorrupted hearts.

'Tis morn with gold the verdant mountain glows;

More high, the snowy peaks with hues of rose.
Far-stretched beneath the many-tinted hills,
A solemn sea! whose billows wide around
A mighty waste of mist the valley fills,
Stand motionless, to awful silence bound:
Pines, on the coast, through mist their tops

unraised:

Nor is his spirit less enrapt, nor less
Alive to independent happiness,

Then, when he lies, out-stretched, at even-tide
Upon the fragrant mountain's purple side:
For as the pleasures of his simple day
Beyond his native valley seldom stray,
Nought round its darling precincts can he find
But brings some past enjoyment to his mind;
While Hope, reclining upon Pleasure's urn,
Binds her wild wreaths, and whispers his

return.

Once, Man entirely free, alone and wild, Was blest as free-for he was Nature's child. He all superior but his God disdained, Walked none restraining, and by none

restrained:

Confessed no law but what his reason taught, Did all he wished, and wished but what he ought.

As man in his primeval dower arrayed
The image of his glorious Sire displayed,
Even so, by faithful Nature guarded, here
The traces of primeval Man appear;
The simple dignity no forms debase;
The eye sublime, and surly lion-grace:
The slave of none, of beasts alone the lord,
His book he prizes, nor neglects his sword;
-Well taught by that to feel his rights,
prepared

With this "the blessings he enjoys to guard."

And, as his native hills encircle ground For many a marvellous victory renowned, The work of Freedom daring to oppose, With few in arms, innumerable foes, When to those famous fields his steps are led, An unknown power connects him with the dead: For images of other worlds are there; Awful the light, and holy is the air. Fitfully, and in flashes, through his soul, Like sun-lit tempests, troubled transports roll; His bosom heaves, his Spirit towers amain, Beyond the senses and their little reign.

And oft, when that dread vision hath past by, He holds with God himself communion high, There where the peal of swelling torrents fills The sky-roofed temple of the eternal hills; Or, when upon the mountain's silent brow Reclined, he sees, above him and below, Bright stars of ice and azure fields of snow; While needle peaks of granite shooting bare Tremble in ever-varying tints of air. And when a gathering weight of shadows brown

Falls on the valleys as the sun goes down; And Pikes, of darkness named and fear and storms,*

Uplift in quiet their illumined forms,

In sea-like reach of prospect round him spread,
Tinged like an angel's smile all rosy red-
Awe in his breast with holiest love unites,
And the near heavens impart their own de-
lights.

When downward to his winter hut he goes,
Dear and more dear the lessening circle grows;
That hut which on the hills so oft employs
His thoughts, the central point of all his joys.

* As Schreck-Horn, the pike of terror. Wetter-Horn, the pike of storms, &c. &c.

And as a swallow, at the hour of rest,
Peeps often ere she darts into her nest,
So to the homestead, where the grandsire tends
A little prattling child, he oft descends,
To glance a look upon the well-matched pair;
Till storm and driving ice blockade him there.
There, safely guarded by the woods behind,
He hears the chiding of the baffled wind,
Hears Winter calling all his terrors round,
And, blest within himself, he shrinks not from
the sound.

Through Nature's vale his homely pleasures glide,

Unstained by envy, discontent, and pride;
The bound of all his vanity, to deck,

With one bright bell, a favourite heifer's neck;
Well pleased upon some simple annual feast,
Remembered half the year and hoped the rest,
If dairy-produce, from his inner hoard,
Of thrice ten summers dignify the board.
-Alas! in every clime a flying ray

Is all we have to cheer our wintry way;
And here the unwilling mind may more than

trace

The general sorrows of the human race:
The churlish gales of
that blow
penury,
Cold as the north-wind o'er a waste of snow,
To them the gentle groups of bliss deny
That on the noon-day bank of leisure lie.
Yet more ;-compelled by Powers which only
deign

That solitary man disturb their reign,
Powers that support an unremitting strife
With all the tender charities of life,
Full oft the father, when his sons have grown
To manhood, seems their title to disown;
And from his nest amid the storms of heaven
Drives, eagle-like, those sons as he was driven;
With stern composure watches to the plain-
And never, eagle-like, beholds again!

When long-familiar joys are all resigned, Why does their sad remembrance haunt the mind?

Lo! where through flat Batavia's willowy groves,

Or by the lazy Seine, the exile roves;

O'er the curled waters Alpine measures swell, And search the affections to their inmost cell; Sweet poison spreads along the listener's veins, Turning past pleasures into mortal pains; Poison, which not a frame of steel can brave, Bows his young head with sorrow to the grave.

Gay lark of hope, thy silent song resume! Ye flattering eastern lights, once more the hills illume!

Fresh gales and dews of life's delicious morn,
And thou, lost fragrance of the heart, return!
Alas! the little joy to man allowed
Fades like the lustre of an evening cloud;
Or like the beauty in a flower installed,
Whose season was, and cannot be recalled.
Yet, when opprest by sickness, grief, or care,
And taught that pain is pleasure's natural heir,
We still confide in more than we can know;
Death would be else the favourite friend of

woe.

'Mid savage rocks, and seas of snow that shine,

Between interminable tracts of pine,

Within a temple stands an awful shrine,
By an uncertain light revealed, that falls
On the mute Image and the troubled walls.
Oh! give not me that eye of hard disdain
That views, undimmed, Einsiedlen's* wretched
fane.

While ghastly faces through the gloom appear,
Abortive joy, and hope that works in fear;
While prayer contends with silenced agony,
Surely in other thoughts contempt may die.
If the sad grave of human ignorance bear
One flower of hope-oh, pass and leave it there!

The tall sun, pausing on an Alpine spire,
Flings o'er the wilderness a stream of fire:
Now meet we other pilgrims ere the day
Close on the remnant of their weary way;
While they are drawing toward the sacred floor
Where, so they fondly think, the worm shall

gnaw no more.

How gaily murmur and how sweetly taste
The fountains reared for them amid the waste!
Their thirst they slake :-they wash their toil-
worn feet,

And some with tears of joy each other greet.
Yes, I must see you when ye first behold
Those holy turrets tipped with evening gold,
In that glad moment will for you a sigh
Be heaved, of charitable sympathy;

In that glad moment when your hands are prest
In mute devotion on the thankful breast!

Last, let us turn to Chamouny that shields With rocks and gloomy woods her fertile fields: Five streams of ice amid her cots descend, And with wild flowers and blooming orchards

blend ;

A scene more fair than what the Grecian feigns
Of purple lights and ever-vernal plains;
Here all the seasons revel hand in hand:

'Mid lawns and shades by breezy rivulets

fanned,

They sport beneath that mountain's matchless height

That holds no commerce with the summer night.

From age to age, throughout his lonely bounds
The crash of ruin fitfully resounds;
Appalling havoc! but serene his brow,
Where daylight lingers on perpetual snow;
Glitter the stars above, and all is black below.
What marvel then if many a Wanderer sigh,
While roars the sullen Arve in anger by,
That not for thy reward, unrivalled Vale!
Waves the ripe harvest in the autumnal gale;
hat thou, the slave of slaves, art doomed to
pine

And droop, while no Italian arts are thine,
To soothe or cheer, to soften or refine.

Hail Freedom! whether it was mine to stray, With shrill winds whistling round my lonely On the bleak sides of Cumbria's heath-clad

way,

To scent the sweets of Piedmont's breathing rose,

And orange gale that o'er Lugano blows;
Still have I found, where Tyranny prevails,
That virtue languishes and pleasure fails,
While the remotest hamlets blessings share
In thy loved presence known, and only there;
Heart-blessings-outward treasures too which
the eye

Of the sun peeping through the clouds can spy,
And every passing breeze will testify.
There, to the porch, belike with jasmine bound
Or woodbine wreaths, a smoother path is wound;
The housewife there a brighter garden sees,
Where hum on busier wing her happy bees;
On infant cheeks there fresher roses blow;
And grey-haired men look up with livelier
brow,-

To greet the traveller needing food and rest;
Housed for the night, or but a half-hour's guest.

And oh, fair France! though now the traveller, sees

Thy three-striped banner fluctuate on the breeze;

Though martial songs have banished songs of love,

And nightingales desert the village grove, Scared by the fife and rumbling drum's alarms, And the short thunder, and the flash of arms; That cease not till night falls, when far and nigh

Sole sound, the Sourd* prolongs his mournful cry!

-Yet, hast thou found that Freedom spreads her power

All nature smiles, and owns beneath her eyes
Beyond the cottage-hearth, the cottage-door:
Her fields peculiar, and peculiar skies.
Yes, as I roamed where Loiret's waters glide
Through rustling aspens heard from side to
When from October clouds a milder light
side,
Fell where the blue flood rippled into white;
Methought from every cot the watchful bird
Crowed with ear-piercing power till then
unheard;

Each clacking mill, that broke the murmuring streams,

Rocked the charmed thought in more delightful dreams;

Chasing those pleasant dreams, the falling leaf
Awoke a fainter sense of moral grief;
The measured echo of the distant flail
Wound in more welcome cadence down the