TAKEN DURING A PEDESTRIAN TOUR AMONG THE ALPS.
No sad vacuities his heart annoy ;
Blows not a zephyr but it whispers joy;
For him lost flowers their idle sweets exhale;
He tastes "the meanest note that swells the gale;"
For him sod seats the cottage-door adorn,
And peeps the far-off spire, his evening bourn !
Dear is the forest frowning o'er his head,
And dear the green-sward to his velvet tread :
Moves there a cloud o'er mid-day's flaming eye?
Upward he looks-"and calls it luxury;
Kind Nature's charities his steps attend;
In every babbling brook he finds a friend;
Whilst chast'ning thoughts of sweetest use, bestow'd
By Wisdom, moralize his pensive road.
Host of his welcome inn, the noontide bower,
To his spare meal he calls the passing poor;
He views the sun uplift his golden fire,
Or sink, with heart alive, like Memnon's* lyre;
Blesses the moon that comes with kindest ray,
To light him shaken by his viewless way;
With bashful fear no cottage children steal
From him, a brother at the cottage meal;
His humble looks no shy restraint impart,
Around him plays at will the virgin heart.
While unsuspended wheels the village dance,
The maidens eye him with inquiring glance,
Much wondering what sad stroke of crazing care
Or desperate love could lead a wanderer there.
I sigh at hoary Chartreuse' doom,
Where now is fled that Power whose frown severe
Tamed "sober Reason" till she crouch'd in fear?
That breathed a death-like peace around these woods.
The cloister startles at the gleam of arms,
And blasphemy the shuddering fane alarms;
Nod the cloud-piercing pines their troubled heads:
Spires, rocks, and lawns, a browner night o'erspreads.
Strong terror checks the female peasant's sighs,
And start the astonish'd shades at female eyes.
The thundering tube the aged angler hears,
And swells the groaning torrent with his tears.
From Bruno's forest screams the affrighted jay,
And slow the insulted eagle wheels away.
The cross,† with hideous laughter demons mock,
By angels planted on the aërial rock.
• The lyre of Memnon is reported to have emitted melancholy or cheerful tones, as it was touched by the sun's evening or morning rays.
Alluding to crosses seen on the tops of the spiry rocks of Chartreuse, which have every Apearance of being inaccessible.
The "parting genius" sighs with hollow breath
Along the mystic streams of Life and Death.*
Swelling the outcry dull, that long resounds
Portentous through her old woods' trackless bounds,
Vallombre,+ 'mid her falling fanes, deplores,
For ever broke, the Sabbath of her bowers.
More pleased, my foot the hidden margin roves
Of Como, bosom'd deep in chesnut groves.
No meadows thrown between, the giddy steeps
Tower, bare or sylvan, from the narrow deeps.
To towns, whose shades of no rude sound complain,
To ringing team unknown and grating wain,
To flat-roof'd towns, that touch the water's bound,
Or lurk in woody sunless glens profound,
Or, from the bending rocks, obtrusive cling,
And o'er the whiten'd wave their shadows fling
Wild round the steeps the little pathway twines,
And Silence loves its purple roof of vines.
The viewless lingerer hence, at evening, sees
From rock-hewn steps the sail between the trees;
Or marks, 'mid opening cliffs, fair dark-eyed 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,
Tracking the yellow sun from steep to steep,
As up the opposing hills, with tortoise foot they creep.
Here, half a village shines, in gold array'd,
Bright as the moon, half hides itself in shade.
From the dark sylvan roofs the restless spire,
Inconstant glancing, mounts like springing fire.
There, all unshaded, blazing forests throw
Rich golden verdure on the waves 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 bless'd, delicious scene! the eye that greets
Thy open beauties, or thy lone retreats;
The unwearied sweep of wood thy cliffs that scales;
The never-ending waters of thy vales;
The cots, those dim religious groves embower,
Or, under rocks that from the water tower
Insinuated, sprinkling all the shore;
Each with his household boat beside the door,
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, like swallows' nests that cleave 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
Names of rivers at the Chartreuse.
Name of one of the valleys of the Chartreuse.
Steal, and compose the oar-forgotten floods,
While Evening's solemn bird melodious weeps,
Heard, by star-spotted bays, beneath the steeps;
-Thy lake, 'mid smoking woods, that blue and grey
Gleams, streak'd 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 born,
While fill each pause the ringing woods of morn.
Now, passing Urseren's open vale serene,
Her quiet streams, and hills of downy green,
Plunge with the Russ embrown'd by Terror's breath,
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 complain'd within ;
Bare steeps, where Desolation stalks, afraid,
Unsteadfast, by a blasted yew upstay'd;
By cells whose image, trembling as he prays,
Awe-struck, the kneeling peasant scarce surveys;
Loose-hanging rocks the day's bless'd eye that hide,
And crosses + rear'd to Death on every side,
Which with cold kiss Devotion planted near,
And, bending, water'd with the human tear,
That faded "silent" from her upward eye,
Unmoved with each rude form of Danger nigh,
Fix'd 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 th' expiring gale,
Moveless o'erhang the deep secluded vale,
The beams of evening, slipping soft between,
Light up of tranquil joy 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 freshen'd mead,
On the low brown wood-huts delighted sleep
Along the brighten'd 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,
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 roadside.
+ Crosses commemorative of the deaths of travellers by the fall of snow and other accidt, very common along this dreadful road.
The houses in the more retired Swiss valleys are all built of wood.
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 unpathway'd 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 desert pines ascend,
Yet with his infants, man undaunted creeps
And hangs his small wood hut upon the steeps.
Where'er below, amid the savage scene,
Peeps out a little speck of smiling green.
A garden plot the mountain air perfumes,
'Mid the dark pines a little orchard blooms,
A zig-zag path from the domestic skiff,
Threading 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 toll'd the funeral bell;
Their watch-dog ne'er his angry bark foregoes,
Touch'd by the beggar's moan of human woes;
The grassy seat beneath their casement shade
The pilgrim's wistful eye hath never stay'd.
-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;
There, hang in fear, when growls the frozen stream,
To guide his dangerous tread, the taper's gleam.
'Mid stormy vapours ever driving by,
Where ospreys, cormorants, and herons cry,
Where hardly given the hopeless waste to cheer,
Denied the bread of life, the foodful ear,
Dwindles the pear on autumn's latest spray,
And apple sickens pale in summer's ray;
Even here Content has fix'd 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 veil'd, 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-crown'd cliffs that o'er the lake recline;
Wide o'er the Alps a hundred streams unfold,
At once to pillars turn'd 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.
-And sure there is a secret Power that reigns
Here, where no trace of man the spot profanes,
Nought* but the herds that, pasturing, upward creep,
Hung dim-discover'd 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 sough; †
The solitary heifer's deepen'd low;
Or rumbling, heard remote, of falling snow;
Save that, the stranger seen below, the boy
Shouts from the echoing hills with savage joy.
When warm from myrtle bays and tranquil seas,
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 noontide hill,
When fragrant scents beneath the enchanted tread
Spring up, his choicest wealth around him spread,
The pastoral Swiss begins the cliffs to scale,
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,
Rock'd on the dizzy larch's narrow tread;
Or steal beneath loose mountains, half deterr'd,
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;
This picture is from the middle region of the Alps.
"Sough," a Scotch word, expressive of the sound of the wind through the trees
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