On Zurich's spires, with rosy light,
The mountains smile at morn and eve,
And Zurich's waters, blue and bright,
The glories of those hills receive.
And there my sister trims her sail,
That like a wayward swallow flies;
But I would rather meet the gale
That fans the eagle in the skies.

She sings in Zurich's chapel choir,
Where rolls the organ on the air,
And bells proclaim, from spire to spire,
Their universal call to prayer
But let me hear the mountain rills,
And old Saint Bernard's storm-bell toll,
And, mid these great cathedral hills,
The thundering avalanches roll.

My brother wears a martial plume,
And serves within a distant land,—
The flowers that on his bosom bloom
Are placed there by a stranger hand
Love meets him but in foreign eyes,
And greets him in a foreign speech:—
But she who to my heart replies
Must speak the tongue these mountains teach.

The warrior's trumpet o'er him swells,
The triumph which it only hath;
But let me hear the mule-worn bells
Speak peace in every mountain path
His spear is ever 'gainst a foe,
Where waves the hostile flag abroad;—
My pike-staff only cleaves the snow,
My banner the blue sky of God.

On Zurich's side my mother sits,
And to her whirring spindle sings—
Through Zurich's wave my father's nets
Sweep daily with their filmy wings.
To that beloved voice I list
And view that father's toil with pride;
But, like a low and vale-born mist,
My spirit climbs the mountain side.

And I would ever hear the stir
And turmoil of the singing winds,
Whose viewless wheels around me whirr,
Whose distaffs are the swaying pines.
And, on some snowy mountain head,
The deepest joy to me is given,
When, net-like, the great storm is spread
To sweep the azure lake of heaven.

Then, since the vale delights me not,
And Zurich woos in vain below,
And it hath been my joy and lot
To scale these Alpine crags of snow—
And since in life I loved them well,
Let me in death lie down with them,
And let the pines and tempests swell
Around me their great requiem.