Not anger, with the pebbles on the beach
Making wild music, and far westward caught
The sun-beam—where, alone and as entranced,
Counting the hours, the fisher in his skiff
Lay with his circular and dotted line
On the bright waters. When the heart of man
Is light with hope, all things are sure to please;
And soon a passage-boat swept gaily by,
Laden with peasant-girls and fruits and flowers,
And many a chanticleer and partlet caged
For Vevey's market-place-a motley group
Seen through the silvery haze. But soon 'twas
The shifting sail flapped idly to and fro,
Then bore them off. I am not one of those
So dead to all things in this visible world,
So wondrously profound, as to move on
In the sweet light of heaven, like him of old 1
(His name is justly in the Calendar)
Who through the day pursued this pleasant path
That winds beside the mirror of all beauty,
And, when at eve his fellow-pilgrims sate,
Discoursing of the lake, asked where it was.
They marvelled, as they might; and so must all,
Seeing what now I saw for now 'twas day,
And the bright Sun was in the firmament,
A thousand shadows of a thousand hues
Chequering the clear expanse. Awhile his orb
Hung o'er thy trackless fields of snow, Mont
Blanc,
Thy seas of ice and ice-built promontories,
That change their shapes for ever as in sport;
Then travelled onward and went down behind
The pine-clad heights of Jura, lighting up
1 Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux. "To admire or despise St. Bernard as he ought," says Gibbon, "the reader, like myself, should have before the windows of his library that incomparable landscape."
The woodman's casement, and perchance his axe
Borne homeward through the forest in his hand;
And, on the edge of some o'erhanging cliff,
That dungeon-fortress 1 never to be named,
Where, like a lion taken in the toils,
Toussaint breathed out his brave and generous
spirit.
Little did He, who sent him there to die,
Think, when he gave the word, that he himself,
Great as he was, the greatest among men,
Should in like manner be so soon conveyed
Athwart the deep,-and to a rock so small
Amid the countless multitude of waves,
That ships have gone and sought it, and returned,
Saying it was not !
HESE grey majestic cliffs that tower to
heaven,
These glimmering glades and open
That echo to the heifer's wandering bell,
Or woodman's axe, or steersman's song beneath,
As on he urges his fir-laden bark,
Or shout of goat-herd boy above them all,
Who loves not? And who blesses not the light,
When thro' some loop-hole he surveys the lake
Blue as a sapphire-stone, and richly set
With chateaux, villages, and village-spires,
Orchards and vineyards, alps and alpine snows?
Here would I dwell; nor visit, but in thought,
Ferney far south, silent and empty now
I The Castle of Joux in Franche-Comté.
As now thy once-luxurious bowers, Ripaille;
Vevey, so long an exiled Patriot's 2 home;
Or Chillon's dungeon-floors beneath the wave,
Channelled and worn by pacing to and fro;
Lausanne, where Gibbon in his sheltered walk
Nightly called up the Shade of ancient Rome; *
Or Coppet, and that dark untrodden grove
Sacred to Virtue, and a daughter's tears!
Here would I dwell, forgetting and forgot;
And oft methinks (of such strange potency
The spells that Genius scatters where he will)
Oft should I wander forth like one in search,
And say, half-dreaming, "Here St. Preux has
stood !"
Then turn and gaze on Clarens.
Yet there is, Within an eagle's flight and less, a scene Still nobler if not fairer (once again Would I behold it ere these eyes are closed, For I can say, "I also have been there!") That Sacred Lake 5 withdrawn among the hills,
The retreat of Amadeus, the first Duke of Savoy. Voltaire thus addresses it from his windows:
66 Ripaille, je te vois. O bizarre Amédée," &c. The seven towers are now no longer a land-mark to the voyager. 2 Ludlow.
3 He has given us a very natural account of his feelings at the conclusion of his long labour there: "It was on the night of the 27th of June, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page in a summer-house in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a berceau or covered walk of acacias, which commands the lake and the mountains. The sky was serene, the moon was shining on the waters, and I will not dissemble my joy. But, when I reflected that I had taken an ever lasting leave of an old and agreeable companion," &c.
There must always be something melancholy in the moment of separation, as all have more or less experienced; none more perhaps than Cowper:-"And now," says he, "I have only to regret that my pleasant work is ended. To the illustrious Greek I owe the smooth and easy flight of many thousand hours. He has been my companion at home and abroad, in the study, in the garden, and in the field. and no measure of success, let my labours succeed as they may, will ever compensate to me the loss of the innocent luxury that I have enjoved, as a translator of Homer."
The burial-place of Necker.
5 The Lake of the Four Cantons
ts depth of waters flanked as with a wall
Built by the Giant-race before the flood;
Where not a cross or chapel but inspires
Holy delight, lifting our thoughts to God
From God-like men,-men in a barbarous age
That dared assert their birth-right, and displayed
Jeeds half-divine, returning good for ill;
That in the desert sowed the seeds of life,
Framing a band of small Republics there,
Which still exist, the envy of the world!
Who would not land in each, and tread the ground;
Land where Tell leaped ashore; and climb to
Of the three hallowed fountains? He that does,
Comes back the better; and relates at home
That he was met and greeted by a race
Such as he read of in his boyish days;
Such as Miltiades at Marathon
Led, when he chased the Persians to their ships.
There, while the well-known boat is heaving in,
Piled with rude merchandise, or launching forth,
Thronged with wild cattle for Italian fairs,
There in the sunshine, 'mid their native snows,
Children, let loose from school, contend to use
The cross-bow of their fathers; and o'er-run
The rocky field where all, in every age,
Assembling sit, like one great family,
Forming alliances, enacting laws;
Each cliff and head-land and green promontory
Graven to their eyes with records of the past
That prompt to hero-worship, and excite
Even in the least, the lowliest, as he toils,
A reverence no where else or felt or feigned;
Their chronicler great Nature; and the volume
Vast as her works-above, below, around!
The fisher on thy beach, Thermopylæ,
Asks of the lettered stranger why he came,
First from his lips to learn the glorious truth!
And who that whets his scythe in Runnemede,
Though but for them a slave, recalls to mind
The barons in array, with their great charter?
Among the everlasting Alps alone,
There to burn on as in a sanctuary,
Bright and unsullied lives th' ethereal flame;
And 'mid those scenes unchanged, unchangeable,
Why should it ever die ?
TILL by the Leman Lake, for many a
mile,
Among those venerable trees I went,
Where damsels sit and weave their
Singing some national song by the way-side. But now the fly was gone, the gnat was come Now glimmering lights from cottage-windows broke.
'Twas dusk; and, journeying upward by the Rhone,
That there came down, a torrent from the Alps.
I entered where a key unlocks a kingdom;
The road and river, as they wind along,
Filling the mountain-pass. There, till a ray Glanced through my lattice, and the householdstir
Warned me to rise, to rise and to depart,
A stir unusual, and accompanied
With many a tuning of rude instruments,
And many a laugh that augured coming pleasure. Mine host's fair daughter for the nuptial rite
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