A hope, that prudence could not then approve,
  That clung to Nature with a truant’s love,
  O’er Gallia’s wastes of corn my footsteps led; 45
  Her files of road-elms, high above my head
  In long-drawn vista, rustling in the breeze;
  Or where her pathways straggle as they please
  By lonely farms and secret villages. 
  But lo! the Alps ascending white in air, [11] 50
  Toy with the sun and glitter from afar.

    And now, emerging from the forest’s gloom,
  I greet thee, Chartreuse, while I mourn thy doom. 
  Whither is fled that Power whose frown severe
  Awed sober Reason till she crouched in fear? [12] 55
  That Silence, once in deathlike fetters bound,
  Chains that were loosened only by the sound
  Of holy rites chanted in measured round? [13]

 —­The voice of blasphemy the fane alarms,
  The cloister startles at the gleam of arms. [14] 60
  The [15] thundering tube the aged angler hears, [G]
  Bent o’er the groaning flood that sweeps away his tears. [16]
  Cloud-piercing pine-trees nod their troubled heads, [17]
  Spires, rocks, and lawns a browner night o’erspreads;
  Strong terror checks the female peasant’s sighs, 65
  And start the astonished shades at female eyes. 
  From Bruno’s forest screams the affrighted jay,
  And slow the insulted eagle wheels away. 
  A viewless flight of laughing Demons mock
  The Cross, by angels planted [H] on the aerial rock. [18] 70
  The “parting Genius” [J] sighs with hollow breath
  Along the mystic streams of Life and Death.[K]
  Swelling the outcry dull, that long resounds
  Portentous through her old woods’ trackless bounds,
  Vallombre, [L] ’mid her falling fanes deplores 75
  For ever broke, the sabbath of her bowers.

    More pleased, my foot the hidden margin roves
  Of Como, bosomed deep in chestnut groves. 
  No meadows thrown between, the giddy steeps
  Tower, bare or sylvan, from the narrow deeps. 80
 —­To towns, whose shades of no rude noise [19] complain,
  From ringing team apart [20] and grating wain—­
  To flat-roofed towns, that touch the water’s bound,
  Or lurk in woody sunless glens profound,
  Or, from the bending rocks, obtrusive cling, 85
  And o’er the whitened wave their shadows fling—­
  The pathway leads, as round the steeps it twines; [21]
  And Silence loves its purple roof of vines. 
  The loitering traveller [22] hence, at evening, sees
  From rock-hewn steps the sail between the trees; 90
  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,