While pastoral pipes and streams the landscape lull,

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 drizzling showers.

From such romantic dreams my soul awake, Lo! Fear looks silent down on Uri's lake; Where by the unpathwayed margin still and dread Was never heard the plodding peasant's tread: Tower like a wall the naked rocks, or reach Far o'er the secret water dark with beach; More high, to where creation seems to end, Shade above shade the desert pines ascend. Yet, with his infants, man undaunted creeps And hangs his small wood-hut upon the steeps, Where'er, below, amid the savage scene Peeps out a little speck of smiling green. A garden-plot the mountain air perfumes, Mid the dark pines a little orchard blooms; A zig-zag path from the domestic skiff, Threading the painful crag, surmounts the cliff.

-Before those hermit doors, that never know
The face of traveller passing to and fro,
No peasant leans upon his pole, to tell

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 grassy seat beneath their casement shade
The pilgrim's wistful eye hath never stayed.
-There, did the iron Genius not disdain

The gentle Power that haunts the myrtle plain,
There might the love-sick Maiden sit, and chide
Th' insuperable rocks and severing tide,
There watch at eve her Lover's sun-gilt sail
Approaching, and upbraid the tardy gale,
There list at midnight, till is heard no more,
Below, the echo of his parting oar,

There hang in fear, when growls the frozen stream,
To guide his dangerous tread, the taper's gleam.

Mid stormy vapours ever driving by,
Where ospreys, cormorants, and herons cry;

Where hardly given the hopeless waste to cheer,
Denied the bread of life the foodful ear,

Dwindles the pear on autumn's latest spray,
And apple sickens pale in summer's ray;
Ev'n here Content has fixed her smiling reign
With Independence, child of high Disdain.
Exulting mid the winter of the skies,

Shy as the jealous chamois, Freedom flies,
And often grasps her sword, and often eyes:

Her crest a bough of Winter's bleakest pine,
Strange" weeds" and alpine plants her helm entwine,
And wildly-pausing oft she hangs aghast,

While thrills the "Spartan fife" between the blast.

"Tis storm; and, hid in mist from hour to hour, 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, Glances the fire-clad eagle's wheeling form; Eastward, in long perspective glittering, shine The wood-crowned cliffs that o'er the lake recline; Wide o'er the Alps a hundred streams unfold, At once to pillars turned that flame with gold;

Behind his sail the peasant strives to shun
The west that burns like one dilated sun,
Where in a mighty crucible expire

The mountains, glowing hot, like coals of fire.

-AND sure there is a secret Power that reigns
Here, where no trace of man the spot profanes,
Nought* but the herds that pasturing upward creep,
Hung dim-discover'd from the dangerous steep,

Or summer hamlet, flat and bare, on high
Suspended, mid the quiet of the sky.
How still! no irreligious sound or sight.
Rouzes the soul from her severe delight.
An idle voice the sabbath region fills
Of Deep that calls to Deep across the hills,
Broke only by the melancholy sound

Of drowsy bells for ever tinkling round;

Faint wail of eagle melting into blue

Beneath the cliffs, and pine-woods steady sugh ↑ ;

* This picture is from the middle region of the Alps.

↑ Sugh, a scotch word expressive of the sound of the wind through

the trees.

The solitary heifer's deepen❜d low;

Or rumbling heard remote of falling snow;
Save that, the stranger seen below, the boy
Shouts from the echoing hills with savage joy.

WHEN warm from myrtle bays and tranquil seas,
Comes on, to whisper hope, the vernal breeze,
When hums the mountain bee in May's glad ear,
And emerald isles to spot the heights appear,
When shouts and lowing herds the valley fill,
And louder torrents stun the noon-tide hill,
When fragrant scents beneath th' enchanted tread
Spring up, his choicest wealth around him spread,
The pastoral Swiss begins the cliffs to scale,

To silence leaving the deserted vale,

Mounts, where the verdure leads, from stage to stage,
And pastures on, as in the Patriarch's age:
O'er lofty heights serene and still they go,
And hear the rattling thunder far below.
They cross the chasmy torrent's foam-lit bed,
Rocked on the dizzy larch's narrow tread;
Or steal beneath loose mountains, half deterr'd,
That sigh and shudder to the lowing herd.