The kneeling peasant scarcely dares to gaze;
By many a votive death-cross [Q] planted near,
And watered duly with the pious tear,
That faded silent from the upward eye
Unmoved with each rude form of peril nigh; [52] 205
Fixed on the anchor left by Him who saves
Alike in whelming snows, and roaring waves.
But soon a peopled region
on the sight
Opens—a little world of calm
delight; [53]
Where mists, suspended on the expiring
gale, 210
Spread roof like o’er the deep secluded
vale, [54]
And beams of evening slipping in between,
Gently illuminate a sober scene:—[55]
Here, on the brown wood-cottages [R] they
sleep, [56]
There, over rock or sloping pasture creep.
[57] 215
On as we journey, in clear view displayed,
The still vale lengthens underneath its
shade
Of low-hung vapour: on the freshened
mead
The green light sparkles;—the
dim bowers recede. [58]
While pastoral pipes and streams the landscape
lull, 220
And bells of passing mules that tinkle
dull,
In solemn shapes before the admiring eye
Dilated hang the misty pines on high,
Huge convent domes with pinnacles and
towers,
And antique castles seen through gleamy
[59] showers. 225
From such romantic dreams,
my soul, awake!
To sterner pleasure, where, by Uri’s
lake
In Nature’s pristine majesty outspread,
Winds neither road nor path for foot to
tread: [60]
The rocks rise naked as a wall, or stretch,
230
Far o’er the water, hung with groves
of beech; [61]
Aerial pines from loftier steeps ascend,
Nor stop but where creation seems to end.
[62]
Yet here and there, if ’mid the
savage scene
Appears a scanty plot of smiling green,
235
Up from the lake a zigzag path will creep
To reach a small wood-hut hung boldly
on the steep. [63]
—Before those thresholds (never can
they know [64]
The face of traveller passing to and fro,)
No peasant leans upon his pole, to tell
240
For whom at morning tolled the funeral
bell;
Their watch-dog ne’er his angry
bark foregoes,
Touched by the beggar’s moan of
human woes;
The shady porch ne’er offered a
cool seat
To pilgrims overcome by summer’s
heat. [65] 245
Yet thither the world’s business
finds its way
At times, and tales unsought beguile the
day,
And there are those fond thoughts
which Solitude, [66]
However stern, is powerless to exclude.
[67]
There doth the maiden watch her lover’s
sail 250
Approaching, and upbraid the tardy gale;
At midnight listens till his parting oar,
And its last echo, can be heard no more.
[68]