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; 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, 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? That Silence, once in deathlike fetters bound, Chains that were loosened only by the sound Of holy rites chanted in measured round? -The voice of blasphemy the fane alarms, The cloister startles at the gleam of arms. The thundering tube the aged angler hears, Bent o'er the groaning flood that sweeps away his

tears.

Cloud-piercing pine-trees nod their troubled heads, Spires, rocks, and lawns a browner night o'er spreads;

Strong terror checks the female peasant's sighs,
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 on the aerial rock.
The "parting Genius" sighs with hollow breath
Along the mystic streams of Life and Death.†
Swelling the outery dull, that long resounds
Portentous through her old woods' trackless bounds,
Vallombre, 'mid her falling fanes, deplores,
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. --To towns, whose shades of no rude noise complain,

From ringing team apart 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,
And o'er the whitened wave their shadows fling, -
The pathway leads, as round the steeps it twines;
And Silence loves its purple roof of vines.
The loitering traveller hence, at evening, sees
From rock-hewn steps the sail between the trees;
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

* Alluding to crosses seen on the tops of the spiry rocks of Chartreuse, which have every appearance of being inaccessible † Names of rivers at the Chartreuse.

Name of one of the valleys of the Chartreuse.

Stretch o'er the pictured mirror broad and blue,
And track the yellow lights from steep to steep,
As up the opposing hills they slowly creep.
Aloft, here, half a village shines, arrayed
In golden light; half hides itself in shade:
While, from amid the darkened roofs, the spire,
Restlessly flashing, seems to mount like fire:
There, all unshaded, blazing forests throw
Rich golden verdure on the lake below.
Slow glides the sail along the illumined shore,
And steals into the shade the lazy oar;
Soft bosoms breathe around contagious sighs,
And amorous music on the water dies.

that greets

How blest, delicious scene! the eye Thy open beauties, or thy lone retreats; Beholds the unwearied sweep of wood that scales Thy cliffs; the endless waters of thy vales; Thy lowly cots that sprinkle all the shore, Each with its household boat beside the door; Thy torrent shooting from the clear-blue sky; Thy towns, that cleave, like swallows' nests, on high; That glimmer hoar in eve's last light, descried Dim from the twilight water's shaggy side, Whence lutes and voices down the enchanted woods Steal, and compose the oar-forgotten floods; Thy lake, that, streaked or dappled, blue or gray, 'Mid smoking woods gleams hid from morning's ray Slow-travelling down the western hills, to enfold Its green-tinged margin in a blaze of gold;

Thy glittering steeples, whence the matin bell Calls forth the woodman from his desert cell, And quickens the blithe sound of oars that pass Along the steaming lake, to early mass.

But now farewell to each and all, adieu

To every charm, and last and chief to you,
Ye lovely maidens that in noontide shade.
Rest near your little plots of wheaten glade;
To all that binds the soul in powerless trance,
Lip-dewing song, and ringlet-tossing dance;
Where sparkling eyes and breaking smiles illume
The sylvan cabin's lute-enlivened gloom.

Alas! the very murmur of the streams Breathes o'er the failing soul voluptuous dreams, While Slavery, forcing the sunk mind to dwell On joys that might disgrace the captive's cell, Her shameless timbrel shakes on Como's marge, And lures from bay to bay the vocal barge.

Yet are thy softer arts with power indued
To soothe and cheer the poor man's solitude.
By silent cottage-doors, the peasant's home
Left vacant for the day, I loved to roam.
But once I pierced the mazes of a wood
In which a cabin undeserted stood;

There an old man an olden measure scanned
On a rude viol touched with withered hand.
As lambs or fawns in April clustering lie
Under a hoary oak's thin canopy,

Stretched at his feet, with steadfast upward eye.

His children's children listened to the sound;

- A Hermit with his family around!

But let us hence; for fair Locarno smiles Embowered in walnut slopes and citron isles: Or seek at eve the banks of Tusa's stream, Where, 'mid dim towers and woods, her waters

gleam.

*

From the bright wave, in solemn gloom, retire
The dull-red steeps, and, darkening still, aspire
To where afar rich orange lustres glow

Bound undistinguished clouds, and rocks, and snow:
Or, led where Via Mala's chasms confine
The indignant waters of the infant Rhine,
Hang o'er the abyss, whose else impervious gloom
His burning eyes with fearful light illume.

The mind condemned, without reprieve, to go O'er life's long deserts with its charge of woe, With sad congratulation joins the train Where beasts and men together o'er the plain Move on, a mighty caravan of pain : Hope, strength, and courage, social suffering brings, Freshening the wilderness with shades and springs.

There be whose lot far otherwise is cast:

Sole human tenant of the piny waste,

By choice or doom a gypsy wanders here,

The river along whose banks you descend in crossing the Alps by the Simplon Pass.