Sweet are the sounds that mingle from afar,
Heard by calm lakes, as peeps the folding star,
Where the duck dabbles 'mid the rustling sedgo,
And feeding pike starts from the water's edge,
Or the swan stirs the reeds, his neck and bill
Wetting, that drip upon the water still;
And heron, as resounds the trodden shore,
Shoots upward, darting his long neck before.
Now, with religious awe, the farewell light
Blends with the solemn colouring of the night;
'Mid groves of clouds that crest the mountain's brow,
And round the west's proud lodge their shadows throw,
Like Una shining on her gloomy way,
The half-seen form of Twilight roams astray;
Shedding, through paly loopholes mild and small,
Gleams that upon the lake's still bosom fall;
Beyond the mountain's giant reach that hides
In deep determined gloom his subject tides;
Soft o'er the surface creep those lustres pale,
Tracking the fitful motions of the gale.
With restless interchange at once the bright
Wins on the shade, the shade upon the light.
No favour'd eye was e'er allow'd to gaze
On lovelier spectacle in fairy days;
When gentle spirits urged a sportive chase,
Brushing with lucid wands the water's face;
While music, stealing round the glimmering deeps,
Charm'd the tall circle of th' enchanted steeps.
The lights are vanish'd from the watery plains:
No wreck of all the pageantry remains.
Unheeded night has overcome the vales:
On the dark earth the baffled vision fails;
The latest lingerer of the forest train,
The lone black fir, forsakes the faded plain;
Last evening sight, the cottage smoke no more,
Lost in the thicken'd darkness, glimmers hoar;
And, towering from the sullen dark-brown mere,
Like a black wall, the mountain-steeps appear.
-Now o'er the soothed accordant heart we feel
A sympathetic twilight slowly steal,
And ever, as we fondly muse, we find
The soft gloom deepening on the tranquil mind.
Stay! pensive, sadly-pleasing visions, stay!
Ah no! as fades the vale, they fade away:
Yet still the tender, vacant gloom remains;
Still the cold cheek its shuddering tear retains.
The bird, who ceased, with fading light to thread
Silent the hedge or steaming rivulet's bed,
From his grey re-appearing tower shall soon
Salute with boding note the rising moon,
Frosting with hoary light the pearly ground,
And pouring deeper blue to æther's bound;
And pleased, her solemn pomp of clouds to fold
In robes of azure, fleecy-white, and gold.
See o'er the eastern hill, where darkness broods
O'er all its vanish'd dells, and lawns, and woods;
Where but a mass of shade the sight can trace,
She lifts in silence up her lovely face;
Above the gloomy valley flings her light,
Far to the western slopes with hamlets white;
And gives, where woods the chequer'd upland strew,
To the green corn of summer, autumn's hue.
Thus Hope, first pouring from her blessed horn
Her dawn, far lovelier than the moon's own morn,
Till higher mounted, strives in vain to cheer
The weary hills, impervious, blackening near;
Yet does she still, undaunted, throw the while
On darling spots remote her tempting smile.
Even now she decks for me a distant scene,
For dark and broad the gulf of time between),
Gilding that cottage with her fondest ray
(Sole bourn, sole wish, sole object of my way;
How fair its lawns and sheltering woods appear!
How sweet its streamlet murmurs in mine ear!)
Where we, my friend, to happy days shall rise,
Till our small share of hardly-paining sighs
(For sighs will ever trouble human breath)
Creep hush'd into the tranquil breast of death.
But now the clear bright moon her zenith gains,
And, rimy without speck, extend the plains:
The deepest cleft the mountain's front displays
Scarce hides a shadow from her searching rays;
From the dark blue faint silvery threads divide
The hills, while gleams below the azure tide;
The scene is waken'd, yet its peace unbroke
By silver'd wreaths of quiet charcoal smoke,
That o'er the ruins of the fallen wood,
Steal down the hill, and spread along the flood.
The song of mountain streams, unheard by day, Now hardly heard, beguiles my homeward way. All air is like the sleeping water, still,
List'ning the aërial music of the hill,
Broke only by the slow clock tolling deep,
Or shout that wakes the ferryman from sleep,
The echoed hoof approaching the far shore,
Soon follow'd by his hollow parting oar;
Sound of closed gatu, across the water borne,
Hurrying the feeding hare through rustling corn;
The tremulous sob of the complaining owl;
And at long intervals the mill-dog's howl;
The distant forge's swinging thump profound;
Or yell, in the deep woods, of lonely hound.
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 alarins;
Nod the cloud-piercing pines their troubled neads:
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 carance 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 trecs;
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 dics.
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
Irsinuated, 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 acci dents, very common along this dreadful road.
The houses in the more retired Swiss valleys are all built of wood.
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