'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 apples sicken 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 14 but the herds that, pasturing, upward creep,
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-wood's steady sugh;
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 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 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,
Rock'd 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.
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 purpled 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 allow`d,
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 16 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!
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