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 th' expiring gale,
Moveless o'er-hang 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 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 beach;
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.
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 accidents, very common along this dreadful road.
The houses in the more retired Swiss valleys are all built of wood.
-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
Th' 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 herona 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 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.
-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-discovered from the dangerous steep,
* This picture is from the middle region of the Alps.
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 deepened 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 noon-tide hill,
When fragrant scents beneath th' 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 patriarch's 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:
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.
Sough, a Scotch word expressive of the sound of the wind through the
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.
When downward to his winter hut he goes,
Dear and more dear the lessening circle grows;
That hut which from the hills his eyes employs
So oft, the central point of all his joys.
Where, safely guarded by the woods behind,
He hears the chiding of the baffled wind
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;
Content 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.
Gay lark of hope, thy silent song resume!
Fair smiling lights the purple hills illume!
Soft gales and dews of life's delicious morn,
And thou, lost fragrance of the heart, return!
Soon flies the little joy to man allowed,
And grief before him travels like a cloud:
For come diseases on and penury's rage,
Labour, and care, and pain, and dismal age,
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.
Oh! give me not that eye of hard disdain
That views undimmed Ensiedlen's* 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!
*This shrine is resorted to, from a hope of relief, by multitudes, from every corner of the Catholic world, labouring under mental or bodily anlictions.
THE FEMALE VAGRANT.
My father was a good and pious man,
An honest man by honest parents bred;
And I believe, that, soon as I began
To lisp, he made me kneel beside my bed,
And in his hearing there my prayers I said;
And afterwards, by my good father taught,
I read, and loved the books in which I read;
For books in every neighbouring house I sought,
And nothing to my mind a sweeter pleasure brought.
The suns of twenty summers danced along,-
Ah! little marked how fast they rolled away;
Then rose a stately hall our woods among,
And cottage after cottage owned its sway.
No joy to see a neighbouring house, or stray
Through pastures not his own, the master took :
My father dared his greedy wish gainsay;
He loved his old hereditary nook,
And ill could I the thought of such sad parting brook.
But, when he had refused the proffered gold,
To cruel injuries he became a prey,
Sore traversed in whate'er he bought and sold:
His troubles grew upon him day by day,
And all his substance fell into decay.
They dealt most hardly with him, and he tried
To move their hearts-but it was vain-for they
Seized all he had; and, weeping side by side,
We sought a home where we uninjured might abide.
It was in truth a lamentable hour
When, from the last hill-top my sire surveyed,
Peering above the trees, the steeple tower
That on his marriage-day sweet music made,
Till then he hoped his bones might there be laid,
Close by my mother, in their native bowers;
Bidding me trust in God, he stood and prayed-
I could not pray :-through tears that fell in showers,
I saw our own dear home, that was no longer ours.
There was a youth whom I had loved so long,
That when I loved him not I cannot say.
'Mid the green mountains many and many a song
We two had sung, like gladsome birds in May.
When we began to tire of childish play,
We seemed still more and more to prize each other;
We talked of marriage and our marriage-day;
And I in truth did love him like a brother;
For never could I hope to meet with such another.
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