up and down the long street.  People go by, with grotesque shadows, now foreshortened and now lengthening away into the darkness and vanishing, while a new one springs up behind the walker, and seems to pass him on the sidewalk.  The iron gates of the park shut with a jangling clang.  There are footsteps, and loud voices;—­a tumult,—­a drunken brawl,—­an alarm of fire;—­then silence again.  And now at length the city is asleep, and we can see the night.  The belated moon looks over the roofs, and finds no one to welcome her.  The moonlight is broken.  It lies here and there in the squares, and the opening of streets,—­angular, like blocks of white marble.

Under such a green, triumphal arch, O Reader! with the odor of flowers about thee, and the song of birds, shalt thou pass onward into the enchanted land, as through the Ivory Gate of dreams!  And as a prelude and majestic march, one sweet human voice, I know not whose, but coming from the bosom of the Alps, sings this sublime ode, which the Alpine echoes repeat afar.

“Come, golden Evening!  In the west

Enthrone the storm-dispelling sun,

And let the triple rainbow rest

O’er all the mountain tops;—­’t is done;

The tempest ceases; bold and bright,

The rainbow shoots from hill to hill;

Down sinks the sun; on presses night;

Mont Blanc is lovely still!

“There take thy stand, my spirit;—­spread

The world of shadows at thy feet;

And mark how calmly overhead,

The stars, like saints in glory, meet.

While, hid in solitude sublime,

Methinks I muse on Nature’s tomb,

And hear the passing foot of Time

Step through the silent gloom.

“All in a moment, crash on crash,

From precipice to precipice,

An avalanche’s ruins dash

Down to the nethermost abyss,

Invisible; the ear alone

Pursues the uproar till it dies;

Echo to Echo, groan for groan,

From deep to deep, replies.

“Silence again the darkness seals,

Darkness that may be felt;—­but soon

The silver-clouded east reveals

The midnight spectre of the moon;

In half-eclipse she lifts her horn,

Yet, o’er the host of heaven supreme,

Brings the faint semblance of a morn,

With her awakening beam.

“Ah! at her touch, these Alpine heights

Unreal mockeries appear;

With blacker shadows, ghastlier lights,

Emerging as she climbs the sphere;

A crowd of apparitions pale!

I hold my breath in chill suspense,

They seem so exquisitely frail,

Lest they should vanish hence.

“I breathe again, I freely breathe;

Thee, Leman’s Lake, once more I trace,

Like Dian’s crescent far beneath,