University of Virginia Library

Temple of hallow'd hospitality!
Rear'd on the loftiest height where man dares rest
Beneath the northern sky:
The pilgrim's and lost wanderer's sole retreat
When drifting snow-flakes sweep in tempests by,
And on the mountain's reeling crest
The wintry whirlwinds rock thy ice-ribb'd seat.

Temple of hallow'd hospitality!
How oft, while yet unvisited,
The pow'r that guards thy sanctuary divine
Amid wild Nature's drear sublimity,
From Albion's cliffs my spirit onward led
To hail thy pilgrim shrine.
And still in thee alone, when first I trod
Helvetia's stranger sod,
Tho' many a sweet and many a savage scene
Before me like enchantment rose
Thy Alpine way between,
Alone, thou hallow'd spot, in thee I sought repose.

Swift gleam'd along Helvetia's range
Proud cities and wide wastes, and vallies green,
In ceaseless interchange:
Here, lakes of silver sheen,
There, wild woods climbing up the mountain brow
That crown'd the icy tract,
And in dark glens below
Bright flashes of the rock-born cataract,
Whose fall, at distance heard,
Sent up to summer suns a murmuring flow
Sweet as the liquid trill of Eve's enamour'd bird.—

Broad Leman spread between,
Where the blue Rhone, as from her icy cave
Cleaving the water with a virgin wave,
Flows unpolluted.—Sweet it was to breathe
At noon-tide, on St. Pierre's commanding brow,
Under the oak's broad arms, and view beneath
Still Bienne's pellucid lake, forgetful not
Of him, self-exil'd from the haunts of men,
Who, lost in dreams on that sequester'd spot,
Long summer days consum'd, or wont to float,
All indolent, which way the oarless boat
Veer'd with the wave.—Sublimely wild the views
Where Arve, swift whirling thro' his troubled course,
A flood of torrent force,
Severs the rocks that cast at noon o'er Cluse
Strange gloom, and seem to warn th' alarmed eye
From scenes that, long unknown to stranger sight,
Make all thy vale, romantic Chamouny!
A wonder and delight—
The goatherd, and the shepherd, and their flocks
Pasturing the crags around,
And, bosom'd 'mid the ranges of the rocks,
Cots with their green enclosures, and clear rills
Wandering with pleasant sound:
Groves grac'd with fruit, and fields of golden grain,
That supplicate the sun,
In the brief circle of his summer reign,
To stay the glacier, where, with all his force,
Winter embodying in one mass the snows,
Brood of a thousand years,
Slow, silent, imperceptible on course,
Heaves the ice-lava, and uproots the earth,
Forest, and field, and all their blissful birth,
Inheritance of ages.—Other part
Prone torrents on th' aerial precipice
Chain'd in their fall, and mountains, height on height,
Alp pil'd on Alp, belting the central isle,
The emerald gem set in eternal ice,
Where summer flow'rs 'mid frozen oceans smile:
And eminent o'er all thy range and rise
Mont-Blanc! sun-diadem'd with purple glow,
When all is night below.

Fair was the day, when at midsummer noon,
In verdant Interlachen's walnut bow'rs,
While the broad sun, thro' heav'n's clear azure, roll'd
O'er Thun's blue lake its orb of gold,
Stole unperceiv'd away th' enchanted hours:
Or when, amid the rocks of Lauterbrun,
I listen'd to the lapse and lulling tune
Of the prone rill, that from th' aerial height,
Like the soft sprinkle of an April show'r,
Dropt glittering down in threads of light,
Where Iris in her rainbow dight
Saw floating into upper air
A thousand sisters sporting there:
Or when in veil of mist half seen,
I stood the cliff and rill between,
And watch'd the Zephyr in his play
Brush off with wanton wing the liquid dust away.

Nor these—nor that Salvator glen
The grandeur of stern Meyringhen,
Crags, and wild woods, and rush, and roar
Of cataracts down the riven shore:
No—nor thy Elfine lake, pure Chêde!
A mirror for Titania made,
Yet, on whose glass, in shadow shown,
Mont-Blanc oft views his ice-crown'd throne:
Nor all, half-wistful, half-appall'd,
The stranger sees at Grindelwald,
When the prone avalanche descending,
On eye and ear strange horrors blending,
Bursts on the shiver'd rocks: not these,
Nor what Helvetia proudlier sees,
A spot than Mont-Blanc more sublime,
Where glory to eternal time
On a poor peasant's name shall dwell,
Thine, that shall Alps outlast, thy name, heroic Tell!

I went, 'mid Burglen's sacred walls,
Where Freedom Tell's blest birth recalls;
I went, where Aschemberg ascends,
And with the storm his memory blends,
And guards his fane those rocks among
Where the unfetter'd steersman sprung,
And to the waves and whirling blast
The bark that bore the Tyrant cast:
I went, where Kussnacht's slope declines,
And the Avenger's fame enshrines,
Where he, whose skill the apple clave
On his child's head, and dar'd to save,
Strung with the chord of death his bow,
And strain'd his strength to wing the blow,
That when infuriate Ghessler came,
Quench'd in his heart the shaft of flame:
Tho' these long stay'd my step, thy Alpine height
Tow'r'd ever on my sight,
And still my haunted spirit dwelt on thee,
Temple of Hospitality!

But not thy hallow'd hearth alone,
Nor the sublimity that robes thy crest
Allur'd me to thy rest.
It was the dream of youth, th' empassion'd dream,
The vision at grey dawn, and close of day,
That ceas'd not on my solitary way,
By Avon's mazy stream:
When in blest years of wedded happiness,
Ere my heart bled with wounds till then unknown,
I nurtur'd pleasure at the breast of pain,
With sufferings not my own:
And woo'd the tragic Muse, and feign'd the tale
Of Julian's guilt, nor seem'd alone to feign,
But felt, in simulating deep distress,
The thrilling spark of the electric chain
Connecting woe and pity—Alps uprose
Before me, wheresoe'er the vision led
The victim of remorse: whether, distraught
With guilt, the murderer commun'd with the dead,
With blood in secret shed:
Or where, 'mid glimpses of the moon I caught
His half-evanished form,
When, like the spirit of the midnight storm,
He tow'r'd upon the mount that rock'd and reel'd
While thunders round him peel'd,
And the forkt lightning, as it fir'd the air,
Hiss'd on his sparkling hair.
Or whether by the force of fancy sway'd,
I saw, amid those frozen solitudes,
Where wildly wandering past,
The form of one, in guise a mountain maid,
Who came to breathe her last
Where once in peace her sinless childhood play'd,
And youth, in blushing loveliness array'd,
Like her own Alpine rose,
That on the margin of its icy bed
More sweet, more beauteous, grows,
Tempted the spoiler: and the spoiler came,
Woo'd, won her, and betray'd.

Accordant to the drama's varying scene,
Alps, their proud crests, and wilderness of snows,
Before my vision rose:
The hallow'd dome enshrin'd the rocks between,
And every feature of the mountain pass,
To travellers on their transient passage shown,
Or by hoar pilgrim known,
As if my life had there familiar been,
Imprest the seal of truth on fiction's shadowy scene.

I saw the seat of stone, the storm-house, there,
Where, day succeeding day,
Each dawn a brother left th' unpurchas'd fare,
Like heav'n-dropt manna on the desert spread,
For the chance wanderer on his toilsome way,
Famish'd and faint: there the sepulchral shed,
Where they, who 'mid the snows had perished,
Lay in the pureness of the icy air,
Where never earth-worm revel'd on decay,
And death forgot his prey,
While the lip seem'd, half-ope, to breathe a pray'r.
There the twin convent, each, a barrier rock
To stand the tempest's shock:
The frozen garden, and half-liquid lake
At noon of summer sun, sheeted with snowy flake.

But, vain my cherish'd wish: long years went by,
Ere on the mountain pass my way had been;
Ere other than the mind's internal eye
Dwelt on the Alpine scene:
Ere yet the avalanche on th' aerial brow,
Gathering destruction on its prone career,
Burst back in distant thunder on the ear:
Ere yet I saw the floods, that roll'd in night
Beneath unfathom'd snow,
Gush thro' the arch of ice, and leap in light
To glad the world below:
Ere wandering o'er the sea of ice, alone,
I sought a spot where mortal ne'er had trod,
And, awe-struck, 'mid the wonders of his might,
Hail'd the creator God.

War rag'd the while, and round Helvetia cast
His iron barrier: but when Albion rear'd
On Fontarabia's tow'r, o'er rescu'd Spain,
His Lion banner, and in triumph past
Where fell of yore the flow'r of Charlemain,
The Paladins at Ronceval,
And with the arm that subjugated Gaul
To Peace the altar rear'd: in that blest hour,
When the Alpine boy beside the water-fall,
Whose stream so late with death had purple run,
Sang idly in the sun:
Or round the broad-horn'd leader of his herd,
Wreath'd the wild mountain flow'r:
When the grape glow'd on Autumn's jocund bow'r,
I rang'd Helvetia's realm: and with firm tread,
As 'mid her mountains bred
Prest wistful on, and left behind
Each haunt that shelters human kind,
Town, hamlet, cot, and chalet roof
Perch'd on the mount's green slope aloof,
Woods, where the oak and chestnut blend,
Or beechen belts the storm defend,
Wastes where the larch begins to fail,
Nor birch bends, quivering, in the gale;
Or where the o'erwearied eye pursu'd
Th' unfeatur'd face of Solitude:
Where flow'r ne'er gems the spring with bloom,
Where summer suns no fruit illume,
Nor sere leaf gilds the autumnal tree;
All—winter:—all—sterility.
Yet 'mid the windings of the rocky steep,
Where icy tempests sweep,
Fresh vigour grew from fresh delight,
As each known scene, that oft had fancy fed,
Successive rose on sight.
There, was the sheltering storm-house, there, the shed
Where sleep embalm'd the dead,
There, the twin convents, each a barrier rock
To stand the tempest shock;
The garden mockery, and the glassy lake,
Where, as when burst the snow-mass on its prey,
Half-tomb'd beneath the frozen flake,
The Convent Dog, long dead, upgazing lay,
And seem'd in act to spring, and toss the snows away.