From such romantic dreams my sould awake,
  Lo!  Fear looks silent down on Uri’s lake,
  By whose unpathway’d margin still and dread 285
  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 beech,
  More high, to where creation seems to end,
  Shade above shade the desert pines ascend, 290
  And still, below, where mid the savage scene
  Peeps out a little speck of smilgin green,
  There with his infants man undaunted creeps
  And hangs his small wood-hut upon the steeps. 
  A garden-plot the desert air perfumes, 295
  Mid the dark pines a little orchard blooms,
  A zig-zag path from the domestic skiff
  Threading the painful cragg surmounts the cliff. 
 —­Before those hermit doors, that never know
  The face of traveller passing to and fro, 300
  No peasant leans upon his pole, to tell
  For whom at morning toll’d the funeral bell,
  Their watch-dog ne’er his angry bark forgoes,
  Touch’d by the beggar’s moan of human woes,
  The grass seat beneath their casement shade 305
  The pilgrim’s wistful eye hath never stay’d. 
 —­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, 310
  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, 315
  To guide his dangerous tread the taper’s gleam.

  Mid stormy vapours ever driving by,
  Where ospreys, cormorants, and herons cry,
  Where hardly giv’n the hopeless waste to chear,
  Deny’d the bread of life the foodful ear, 320
  Dwindles the pear on autumn’s latest spray,
  And apple sickens pale in summer’s ray,
  Ev’n here Content has fix’d her smiling reign
  With Independance child of high Disdain. 
  Exulting mid the winter of the skies, 325
  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, 330
  While thrills the “Spartan fife” between the blast.

  ’Tis storm; and hid in mist from hour to hour
  All day the floods a deeper murmur pour,
  And mournful sounds, as of a Spirit lost,
  Pipe wild along the hollow-blustering coast, 335
  ’Till the Sun walking on his western field
  Shakes from behind the clouds his flashing