The melancholy slackening that ensued
  Upon those tidings by the peasant given
  Was soon dislodged.  Downwards we hurried fast,
  And, with the half-shaped road which we had missed, 620
  Entered a narrow chasm.  The brook and road [1]
  Were fellow-travellers in this gloomy strait, [Bb]
  And with them did we journey several hours
  At a slow pace. [2] The immeasurable height
  Of woods decaying, never to be decayed, 625
  The stationary blasts of waterfalls,
  And in the narrow rent at every turn
  Winds thwarting winds, bewildered and forlorn,
  The torrents shooting from the clear blue sky,
  The rocks that muttered close upon our ears, 630
  Black drizzling crags that spake by the way-side
  As if a voice were in them, the sick sight
  And giddy prospect of the raving stream,
  The unfettered clouds and region of the Heavens,
  Tumult and peace, the darkness and the light—­635
  Were all like workings of one mind, the features
  Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree;
  Characters of the great Apocalypse,
  The types and symbols of Eternity,
  Of first, and last, and midst, and without end. 640

    That night our lodging was a house that stood
  Alone within the valley, at a point
  Where, tumbling from aloft, a torrent swelled
  The rapid stream whose margin we had trod;
  A dreary mansion, large beyond all need, [Cc] 645
  With high and spacious rooms, deafened and stunned
  By noise of waters, making innocent sleep
  Lie melancholy among weary bones.

    Uprisen betimes, our journey we renewed,
  Led by the stream, ere noon-day magnified 650
  Into a lordly river, broad and deep,
  Dimpling along in silent majesty,
  With mountains for its neighbours, and in view
  Of distant mountains and their snowy tops,
  And thus proceeding to Locarno’s Lake, [Dd] 655
  Fit resting-place for such a visitant. 
  Locarno! spreading out in width like Heaven,
  How dost thou cleave to the poetic heart,
  Bask in the sunshine of the memory;
  And Como! thou, a treasure whom the earth 660
  Keeps to herself, confined as in a depth
  Of Abyssinian privacy.  I spake
  Of thee, thy chestnut woods, [Ee] and garden plots
  Of Indian corn tended by dark-eyed maids;
  Thy lofty steeps, and pathways roofed with vines, 665
  Winding from house to house, from town to town,
  Sole link that binds them to each other; [Ff] walks,
  League after league, and cloistral avenues,
  Where silence dwells if music be not there: 
  While yet a youth undisciplined in verse, 670
  Through fond ambition of that hour I strove