Whose flaccid sails in forms fantastic droop,
Brightening the gloom where thick the forests stoop;
-Thy torrents shooting from the clear blue sky,
Thy towns, that cleave like swallows' nests, on high;
That glimmer hoar in eve's last light, descried
Dim from the twilight water's shaggy side,
Whence lutes and voices down the enchanted woods
Steal, and compose the oar-forgotten floods;

-Thy lake, 'mid smoking woods, that blue and gray
Gleams, streaked or dappled, hid from morning's ray,
Slow travelling down the western hills, to fold
Its green-tinged margin in a blaze of gold;
From thickly-glittering spires, the matin bell
Calling the woodman from his desert cell,
A summons to the sound of oars that pass,
Spotting the steaming deeps, to early mass;
Slow swells the service, o'er the water borne,
While fill each pause the ringing woods of morn.
Farewell those forms that in thy noon-tide shade
Rest near their little plots of wheaten glade;

These charms that bind the soul in powerless trance,
Lipdewing song, and ringlet-tossing dance.
Where sparkling eyes and breaking smiles illume
The sylvan cabin's lute-enlivened gloom.
-Alas! the very murmur of the streams
Breathes o'er the failing soul voluptuous dreams,
While Slavery, forcing the sunk mind to dwell
On joys that might disgrace the captive's cell,
Her shameless timbrel shakes on Como's marge,
And winds, from bay to bay, the vocal barge.

Yet arts are thine that soothe the unquiet heart,
And smiles to Solitude and Want impart.
loved by silent cottage-doors to roam,
The far-off peasant's day-deserted home;
And once I pierced the mazes of a wood,
Where, far from public haunt, a cabin stood;
There by the door a hoary-headed Sire
Touched with his withered hand an ancient lyre;
Beneath an old gray oak, as violets lie,
Stretched at his feet with steadfast, upward eye,
His children's children joined the holy sound;
-A Hermit with his family around!

But let us hence, for fair Locarno smiles
Eowered in walnut slopes and citron isles;
Or seek at eve the banks of Tusa's stream,

The Grison gipsy here her tent hath placed,
Sole human tenant of the piny waste;
Her tawny skin, dark eyes, and glossy locks,
Bend o'er the smoke that curls beneath the rocks.
-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 waste of sand with shades and springs.
She, solitary, through the desert drear
Spontaneous wanders, hand in hand with Fear.

A giant moan along the forest swells
Protracted, and the twilight storm foretells,
And ruining from the cliffs, their deafening load
Tumbles, the wildering Thunder slips abroad;
On the high summits Darkness comes and goes,
Hiding their fiery clouds, their rocks, and snows;
The torrent, traversed by the lustre broad,
Starts, like a horse beside the flashing road;
In the roofed bridge, at that terrific hour,
She seeks a shelter from the battering shower.
- Fierce comes the river down; the crashing wood
Gives way, and half its pines torment the flood;
Fearful, beneath, the Water-spirits call,

And the bridge vibrates, tottering to its fall.

We, mid dim towers and woods, her waters gleam;

From the bright wave, in solemn gloom, retire
The call-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: the else impervious gloom

His burning eyes with fearful light illume.

- Heavy, and dull, and cloudy is the night
No star supplies the comfort of its light,
A single taper in the vale profound
Shifts, while the Alps dilated glimmer round;
And, opposite, the waning Moon hangs still
And red, above her melancholy hill.

By the deep quiet gloom appalled, she sighs,
Stoops her sick head, and shuts her weary eyes.
She hears, upon the mountain forest's brow,
The death-dog, howling loud and long below;
On viewless fingers counts the valley-clock,
Followed by drowsy crow of midnight cock.
The dry leaves stir as with a serpent's walk,
And, far beneath, Banditti voices talk;
Behind her hill, the Moon, all crimson, rides,
And his red eyes the slinking water hides.
-Vexed by the darkness, from the piny gulf
Ascending, nearer howls the famished wolf,
While through the stillness scatters wild dismay
Her babe's small cry, that leads him to his prey.

The river along whose banks you descend in crossing the

Alps by the Simplon pass.

Plunge with the Russ embrowned by Terror's breath; | A garden-plot the desert air perfumes,
Where danger roofs the narrow walks of death;

By floods, that, thundering from their dizzy height,
Swell more gigantic on the steadfast sight;
Black drizzling crags, that, beaten by the din,
Vibrate, as if a voice complained within;
Bare steeps, where Desolation stalks, afraid,
Unsteadfast, by a blasted yew upstayed;

By cells* whose image, trembling as he prays,
Awe-struck, the kneeling peasant scarce surveys;
Loose-hanging rocks the Day's blessed eye that hide,
And crossest reared to Death on every side,
Which with cold kiss Devotion planted near,
And, bending, watered with the human tear,
That faded "silent" from her upward eye,
Unmoved with each rude form of Danger nigh,
Fixed on the anchor left by Him who saves
Alike in whelming snows and roaring waves,

On as we move, a softer prospect opes,
Calm huts, and lawns between, and sylvan slopes,
While mists, suspended on the expiring gale,
Moveless o'erhang the deep secluded vale,
The beams of evening, slipping soft between,
Gently illuminate a sober scene;

Winding its dark-green wood and emerald glade,
The still vale lengthens underneath the shade;
While in soft gloom the scattering bowers recede,
Green dewy lights adorn the freshened mead,
On the low brown wood-huts delighted sleep
Along the brightened gloom reposing deep:
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 drizzling showers.

From such romantic dreams, my soul, awake!
Lo! Fear looks silent down on Uri's lake,
Where, by the unpathwayed margin, still and dread,
Was never heard the plodding peasant's tread.
Tower like a wall the naked rocks, or reach
Far o'er the secret water dark with beech;
More high, to where creation seems to end,
Shade above shade, the aërial pines ascend,
Yet with his infants Man undaunted creeps
And hangs his small wood-cabin on the steeps
Where'er below amid the savage scene
Peeps out a little speck of smiling green,

* The Catholic religion prevails here: these cells are, as is well known, very common in the Catholic countries, planted,

like the Roman tombs, along the road side.

'Mid the dark pines a little orchard blooms;
A zig-zag path from the domestic skiff,
Thridding the painful crag, surmounts the cliff.
- Before those hermit doors, that never 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 grassy seat beneath their casement shade
The pilgrim's wistful eye hath never stayed.
-There, did the iron Genius not disdain
The gentle Power that haunts the myrtle plain,
There, might the love-sick maiden sit, and chide
The insuperable rocks and severing tide;
There, watch at eve her lover's sun-gilt sail
Approaching, and upbraid the tardy gale;
There, list at midnight till is heard no more,
Below, the echo of his parting oar.

+ Crosses commemorative of the deaths of travellers by the fall of snow and other accidents are very common along this dreadful road.

'Mid stormy vapours ever driving by,
Where ospreys, cormorants, and herons cry,
Hovering o'er rugged 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 rav
Even here Content has fixed her smiling reign
With Independence, child of high Disdain.
Exulting 'mid the winter of the skies,
Shy as the jealous chamois, Freedom flies,
And often grasps her sword, and often eyes;
Her crest a bough of Winter's bleakest pine,
Strange "weeds" and Alpine plants her helm entwine
And, wildly pausing, oft she hangs aghast,
While thrills the "Spartan fife" between the blast.

"Tis storm; and, hid in mist from hour to hour,
All day the floods a deepening 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 fire-clad eagle's wheeling form ;
Eastward, in long perspective glittering, shine
The wood-crowned cliffs that o'er the lake recline;
Wide o'er the Alps a hundred streams unfold,
At once to pillars turned that flame with gold:
Behind his sail the peasant strives to shun
The west, that burns like one dilated sun,
Where in a mighty crucible expire
The mountains, glowing hot, like coals of fire.

But, lo! the Boatman, overawed, before
The pictured fane of Tell suspends his oar;

The houses in the more retired Swiss valleys are all built Confused the Marathonian tale appears,

of wood

While burn in his full eyes the glorious 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,
Exalt, and agitate, his labouring soul?
Sey, who, by thinking on Canadian hills,
Or wild Aosta lulled by Alpine rills,

On Zutphen's plain; or where, with softened gaze,

The old gray stones the plaided chief surveys;

Can guess the high resolve, the cherished pain,

Of him whom passion rivets to the plain,

Or rather stay to taste the mild delights
Of pensive Underwalden'st 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 from the aerial 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,

Where breathed the gale that caught Wolfe's hap- Nought but the herds that, pasturing upward, creep, piest sigh,

And the last sunbeam fell on Bayard's eye;
Where bleeding Sidney from the cup retired,

And glad Dundee in "faint huzzas" expired?

Where Silence still her death-like reign extends,
Save when the startling cliff unfrequent rends;
In the deep snow the mighty ruin drowned,
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 near Moon, that coasts the vast profound,
Wheels pale and silent her diminished round,

Hung dim discovered from the dangerous steep,
Or summer hamlet, flat and bare, on high
Suspended, 'mid the quiet of the sky.
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,
Broke only by the melancholy sound
Of Drowsy bells, for ever tinkling round;
Faint wail of eagle melting into blue
Beneath the cliffs, and pine-woods' steady sugh ;
The solitary heifer's deepened low;

And far and wide the icy summits blaze,
Regicing in the glory of her rays:
To him the day-star glitters small and bright,
Shora 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 erd and hunger are his least of woes;
The Demon of the Snow, with angry roar
Descending, shuts for aye his prison door.
Then with Despair's whole weight his spirits sink
No read to feed him, and the snow his drink,
While, ere his eyes can close upon the day,
The eagle of the Alps o'ershades her prey.

Hence shall we turn where, heard with fear afar,
Thunders through echoing pines the headlong Aar?

Or rumbling, heard remote, of falling snow;
Save when, a stranger seen below, the boy
Shouts from the echoing hills with savage joy.

Comes on, to whisper hope, the vernal breeze,
When hums the mountain bee in May's glad ear,
And emerald isles to spot the heights appear,
When shouts and lowing herds the valley fill,
And louder torrents stun the noon-tide hill,
When fragrant scents beneath the enchanted tread
Spring up, his choicest wealth around him spread,
The pastoral Swiss begins the cliffs to scale,

When warm from myrtle bays and tranquil seas,

Pke a word very commonly used in the north of Eng

To silence leaving the deserted vale;

Mounts, where the verdure leads, from stage to stage,
And pastures on, as in the Patriarchs' age:
O'er lofty heights serene and still they go,
And hear the rattling thunder far below;
They cross the chasmy torrent's foam-lit bed,
Rocked on the dizzy larch's narrow tread;
Or steal beneath loose mountains, half deterred,
That sigh and shudder to the lowing herd.
-I see him, up the midway cliff he creeps
To where a scanty knot of verdure peeps,

Thence down the steep a pile of grass he throws,
The fodder of his herds in winter snows.
Far different life to what tradition hoar
Transmits of days more blest in times of yore;

and, to signify a high mountain of the conic form, as Langdale melancholy disposition than the other inhabitants of the Alps.

The people of this Canton are supposed to be of a more

ate, &c.

For most of the images in the next sixteen verses I am in

debted to M. Raymond's interesting observations annexed to

has translation of Coxe's Tour in Switzerland.

E

this, if true, may proceed from their living more secluded.

This picture is from the middle region of the Alps.

|| Sugh, a Scotch word expressive of the sound of the wind through the trees.

Then Summer lengthened out his season bland,
And with rock-honey flowed the happy land.
Continual fountains 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 forced the herds from pastures bare
For scanty food the treacherous cliffs to dare.
Then the milk-thistle bade those herds demand
Three times a day the pail and welcome hand.
But human vices have provoked the rod
Of angry Nature to avenge her God.
Thus does the father to his sons relate,

On the lone mountain-top, their changed estate.
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 mighty waste of mist the valley fills,

A solemn sea! whose vales and mountains round
Stand motionless, to awful silence bound:
A gulf of gloomy blue, that opens wide
And bottomless, divides the midway tide:
Like leaning masts of stranded ships appear
The pines that near the coast their summits rear;
Of cabins, woods, and lawns, a pleasant shore
Bounds calm and clear the chaos still and hoar;
Loud through that midway gulf ascending, sound
Unnumbered streams with hollow roar profound:
Mount through the nearer mist the chant of birds,
And talking voices, and the low of herds,
The bark of dogs, the drowsy tinkling bell,
And wild-wood mountain lutes of saddest swell.
Think not, suspended from the cliff on high,
He looks below with undelighted eye.
-No vulgar joy is his, at even-tide
Stretched on the scented 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, that ceaseless leans on Pleasure's urn,
Binds her wild wreaths, and whispers his return.

Once Man entirely free, alone and wild,
Was blessed 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 vestal Nature guarded, here
The traces of primeval Man appear;
The native 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 the 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 wondrous victory renowned,
The work of Freedom daring to oppose,
With few in arms*, innumerable foes,
When to those glorious 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.
Uncertain through his fierce uncultured soul,
Like lighted tempests, troubled transports roll;
To viewless realms his Spirit towers amain,
Beyond the senses and their little reign.

And oft, when passed that solemn vision by,
He holds with God himself communion high,
Where the dread 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:
-Great joy, by horror tamed, dilates his heart,
And the near heavens their own delights impart.
-When the Sun bids the gorgeous scene farewell,
Alps overlooking Alps their state upswell;
Huge Pikes of Darkness named, of Fear and Storms
Lift, all serene, their still, illumined forms,
In sea-like reach of prospect round him spread,
Tinged like an angel's smile all rosy red.

When downward to his winter hut he goes,
Dear and more dear the lessening circle grows;
That hut which from the hills his eye employs
So oft, the central point of all his joys.
And as a Swift, by tender cares opprest,
Peeps often ere she dart into her nest,
So to the untrodden floor, where round him looks
His father, helpless as the babe he rocks,
Oft he descends to nurse the brother pair,
Till storm and driving ice blockade him there.
There, safely guarded by the woods behind,
He hears the chiding of the baffled wind,

*Alluding to several battles which the Swiss in very sma numbers have gained over their oppressors, the house of Au tria; and, in particular, to one fought at Næffels, near Glaru where three hundred and thirty men defeated an army of bi tween fifteen and twenty thousand Austrians. Scattered ove the valley are to be found eleven stones, with this inscription 1388, the year the battle was fought, marking out, as I was tol upon the spot, the several places where the Austrians attemp ing to make a stand were repulsed anew.

† As Schreck-Horn, the pike of terror; Wetter-IIorn, the pik of storms, &c &c.

Hears Winter, calling all his terrors round,

Rush down the living rocks with whirlwind 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 consecrate the board.

-Alas! in every clime a flying ray

sal we have to cheer our wintry way

"Here," cried a thoughtful Swain, upon whose head

The "blossoms of the grave" were thinly spread,
Last night, while by his dying fire, as closed
The day, in luxury my limbs reposed,

"Here Penury oft from Misery's mount will guide
Eren to the summer door his icy tide,

And here the avalanche of Death destroy
The little cottage of domestic joy.

Bat the unwilling mind may more than trace
The general sorrows of the human race:

The churlish gales, that unremitting blow

Cold from necessity's continual snow,

To the gentle groups of bliss deny

That on the noon-day bank of leisure lie.

Yet more;-compelled by Powers which only deign

Till, Hope-deserted, long in vain his breath
Implores the dreadful untried sleep of Death.
-'Mid savage rocks, and seas of snow that shine
Between interminable tracts of pine,

A Temple stands, which holds an awful shrine,
By an uncertain light revealed, that falls
On the mute Image and the troubled walls:
Pale, dreadful faces round the Shrine appear,
Abortive Joy, and Hope that works in fear;
While strives a secret Power to hush the crowd,
Pain's wild rebellious burst proclaims her rights aloud.

That solitary man disturb their reign,
Powers that support a never-ceasing strife
With all the tender charities of life,
The father, as his sons of strength become
To pay the filial debt, for food to roam,
From his bare nest amid the storms of heaven
Dries, eagle-like, those sons as he was driven;
His last dread pleasure watches to the plain —
And never, eagle-like, beholds again!"
When the poor heart has all its joys resigned,
Why does their sad remembrance cleave behind?
La! where through flat Batavia's willowy groves,
Or by the lazy Seine, the exile roves;
Set oer the waters mournful measures swell,
Choking tender thought's "memorial cell;"
Past pleasures are transformed to mortal pains,
Wale poison spreads along the listener's veins,
Poson, which not a frame of steel can brave,
Bows young head with sorrow to the grave.*
Gaylark of hope, thy silent song resume!
Fairing lights the purpled hills illume!
Soft gales and dews of life's delicious morn,
And thon, lost fragrance of the heart, return!
Soon fies the little joy to man allowed,
And grief before him travels like a cloud;

For come Diseases on, and Penury's rage,

Tabour, and Care, and Pain, and dismal Age,

Oh! give me not that eye of hard disdain
That views undimmed Ensiedlen'st wretched fane.
'Mid muttering prayers all sounds of torment meet,
Dire clap of hands, distracted chafe of feet;
While, loud and dull, ascends the weeping cry,
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, tiptoe on an Alpine spire,
Flings o'er the wilderness a stream of fire;
Now let us meet the pilgrims, ere the day
Close on the remnant of their weary way;

While they are drawing towards the sacred floor
Where the charmed worm of pain shall gnaw no more.
How gaily murmur and how sweetly taste

The fountains reared for them amid the waste!
There some with tearful kiss each other greet,
And some, with reverence, wash their toil-worn fect.
Yes, I will see you when ye first behold
Those holy turrets tipped with evening gold,
In that glad moment when the hands are prest
In mute devotion on the thankful breast.

The effect of the famous air, called in French Ranz des

Vaches, upon the Swiss troops.

Last let us turn to where Chamoùny 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 lawns and shades by breezy rivulets fanned,
Here all the Seasons revel hand in hand.

-Red stream the cottage-lights; the landscape fades,
Erroneous wavering 'mid the twilight shades.
Alone ascends that Hill of matchless height||,
That holds no commerce with the summer Night;
From age to age, amid his lonely bounds
The crash of ruin fitfully resounds;

+ This shrine is resorted to, from a hope of relief, by multitudes, from every corner of the Catholic world, labouring under mental or bodily afflictions.

Rude fountains built and covered with sheds for the arcommodation of the Pilgrims, in their ascent of the mountain.

This word is pronounced upon the spot Chàmouny: I have taken the liberty of changing the accent.

It is only from the higher part of the valley of Châmouny hat Mont Blanc is visible.