English

Who first beholds those everlasting clouds,
Seed-time and harvest, morning, noon and night,
Still where they were, steadfast, immovable, —
Those mighty hills, so shadowy, so sublime,
As rather to belong to heaven than earth, —
But instantly receives into his soul
A sense, a feeling that he loses not,
A something that informs him 't is an hour
Whence he may date henceforward and forever?
To me they seemed the barriers of a world,
Saying, Thus far, no further! and as o'er

In the same hour the breath of life receiving,
They came together and were beautiful;
But, as they slumbered in their mother's lap,
How mournful was their beauty! She would sit;
And look and weep, and look and weep again;
For Nature had but half her work achieved,
Denying, like a step-dame, to the babes
Her noblest gifts; denying speech to one,
And to the other — reason.
But at length
(Seven years gone by, seven melancholy years)
Another came, as fair and fairer still;
And then, how anxiously the mother watched.

Now the gray granite, starting through the snow,
Discovered many a variegated moss
That to the pilgrim resting on his staff
Shadows out capes and islands; and ere long
Numberless flowers, such as disdain to live
In lower regions, and delighted drink
The clouds before they fall, flowers of all hues,
With their diminutive leaves covered the ground.
There, turning by a venerable larch,
Shivered in two yet most majestical
With his long level branches, we observed
A human figure sitting on a stone

J ORASSE was in his three-and-twentieth year;
Graceful and active as a stag just roused;
Gentle withal, and pleasant in his speech,
Yet seldom seen to smile. He had grown up
Among the hunters of the Higher Alps;
Had caught their starts and fits of thoughtfulness,
Their haggard looks, and strange soliloquies,
Arising (so say they that dwell below)
From frequent dealings with the Mountain-Spirits.
But other ways had taught him better things;
And now he numbered, marching by my side,

My mule refreshed — and, let the truth be told,
He was nor dull nor contradictory,
But patient, diligent, and sure of foot,
Shunning the loose stone on the precipice,
Snorting suspicion while with sight, smell, touch,
Trying, detecting, where the surface smiled;
And with deliberate courage sliding down,
Where in his sledge the Laplander had turned
With looks aghast — my mule refreshed, his bells
Jingled once more, the signal to depart,
And we set out in the gray light of dawn,
Descending rapidly — by waterfalls

Night was again descending, when my mule,
That all day long had climbed among the clouds,
Higher and higher still, as by a stair
Let down from heaven itself, transporting me,
Stopped, to the joy of both, at that low door,
That door which ever, as self-opened, moves
To them that knock, and nightly sends abroad
Ministering spirits. Lying on the watch,
Two dogs of grave demeanor welcomed me,
All meekness, gentleness, though large of limb;
And a lay-brother of the hospital,
Who, as we toiled below, had heard by fits

STILL by the Leman Lake, for many a mile,
Among those venerable trees I went,
Where damsels sit and weave their fishing-nets,
Singing some national song by the wayside
But now the fly was gone, the gnat was come;
Now glimmering lights from cottage-windows broke.
'T was dusk; and, journeying upward by the R HONE ,
That there came down, a torrent from the Alps,
I entered where a key unlocks a kingdom;
The road and river, as they wind along,
Filling the mountain pass. There, till a ray

These gray majestic cliffs that tower to heaven,
These glimmering glades and open chestnut groves,
That echo to the heifer's wandering bell,
Or woodman's axe, or steers-man's song beneath,
As on he urges his fir-laden bark,
Or shout of goatherd boy above them all,
Who loves not? And who blesses not the light,
When through some loop-hole he surveys the lake
Blue as a sapphire-stone, and richly set
With chateaux, villages, and village-spires,
Orchards and vineyards, alps and alpine snows?

Day glimmered in the east, and the white Moon
Hung like a vapor in the cloudless sky,
Yet visible, when on my way I went,
Glad to be gone; a pilgrim from the North,
Now more and more attracted as I drew
Nearer and nearer. Ere the artisan
Had from his window leant, drowsy, half-clad,
To snuff the morn, or the caged lark poured forth,
From his green sod upspringing as to heaven
(His tuneful bill o'erflowing with a song
Old in the days of Homer , and his wings
With transport quivering), on my way I went.

TO
JOHN HOBHOUSE, ESQ.
THIS POEM IS INSCRIBED BY HIS
FRIEND.
In the year since Jesus died for men,
Eighteen hundred years and ten,
We were a gallant company,
Riding o'er land and sailing o'er sea.
Oh, but we went merrily!
We forded the river, and clomb the high hill,
Never our steeds for a day stood still;
Whether we lay in the cave or the shed,
Our sleep fell soft on the hardest bed;
Whether we couch'd in our rough capote,
On the rougher plank of our gliding boat,
Or stretch'd on the beach, or our saddles spread