And what if ospreys, cormorants, herons cry,
  Amid tempestuous vapours driving by, [69] 255
  Or hovering over wastes too bleak to rear
  That common growth of earth, the foodful ear; [70]
  Where the green apple shrivels on the spray,
  And pines the unripened pear in summer’s kindliest ray; [71]
  Contentment shares the desolate domain [72] 260
  With Independence, child of high Disdain. 
  Exulting ’mid the winter of the skies,
  Shy as the jealous chamois, Freedom flies,
  And grasps by fits her sword, and often eyes;
  And sometimes, as from rock to rock she bounds 265
  The Patriot nymph starts at imagined sounds,
  And, wildly pausing, oft she hangs aghast,
  Whether some old Swiss air hath checked her haste
  Or thrill of Spartan fife is caught between the blast. [73]

    Swoln with incessant rains from hour to hour, [74] 270
  All day the floods a deepening murmur pour: 
  The sky is veiled, and every cheerful sight: 
  Dark is the region as with coming night;
  But what a sudden burst of overpowering light! 
  Triumphant on the bosom of the storm, 275
  Glances the wheeling eagle’s glorious form![75]
  Eastward, in long perspective glittering, shine
  The wood-crowned cliffs that o’er the lake recline;
  Those lofty cliffs a hundred streams unfold, [76]
  At once to pillars turned that flame with gold:  280
  Behind his sail the peasant shrinks, to shun
  The west, [77] that burns like one dilated sun,
  A crucible of mighty compass, felt
  By mountains, glowing till they seem to melt. [78]

    But, lo! the boatman, overawed, before 285
  The pictured fane of Tell suspends his oar;
  Confused the Marathonian tale appears,
  While his eyes sparkle with heroic tears. [79]
  And who, that walks where men of ancient days
  Have wrought with godlike arm the deeds of praise, 290
  Feels not the spirit of the place control,
  Or rouse [80] and agitate his labouring soul? 
  Say, who, by thinking on Canadian hills,
  Or wild Aosta lulled by Alpine rills,
  On Zutphen’s plain; or on that highland dell, 295
  Through which rough Garry cleaves his way, can tell
  What high resolves exalt the tenderest thought
  Of him whom passion rivets to the spot, [81]
  Where breathed the gale that caught Wolfe’s happiest sigh,
  And the last sunbeam fell on Bayard’s eye; 300
  Where bleeding Sidney from the cup retired,
  And glad Dundee in “faint huzzas” [S] expired?