Julia Alpinula :: :: University of Virginia Library

Pure as the morning's virgin dew
Falling upon the vines of spring,
In blest seclusion Julia grew,
A fairy shape—a spotless thing.
Her home she deemed a little heaven;
She had heard nought of crime and sorrow,
Save in her father's tales at even,
And their remembrance had no morrow.
Till thoughts maturer fixed a trace
Of pensiveness on her sweet face,
And then, as to his neck she clung,
With curious, fond, familiar tongue,
Much would she question of the scar
Which his sagacious forehead bore,
And of the nodding plumes of war,
And why those nodding plumes he wore,

Then wonder at the acts of men,
And pause, and think, and ask again;
But infancy flew lightly on,
And the mind took another tone;
Now gaily gathering vernal flowers,
Now dancing out the summer hours,
Now stripping the autumnal vines,
And now as winter eve declines,
Passing her fairy hand along
The lyre, or in Virgilian song,
Chanting the verse, so sweet and clear,
Which thrills her father's soul to hear.
Where Alpine glaciers, rough and rude,
Hung in an icy solitude;
On lonely hills, beneath the frown
Of pines, that bending o'er the steep,
Sent their prophetic murmurs down,
In inspiration wild and deep;
Where some romantic fountain played,
Or lake spread out its waters blue,
Or valley flowered, or old cascade
Dashed down its waters into dew;
Erewhile she loved to rove, and made
Her soul familiar with the face
Sublime of universal Pan;
Nor mountain soar'd, nor river ran,
But in her pure eye wore the trace

Of Godhead, conversant with man.
In thunder, night, the wind's wild swells,
She heard mysterious oracles,
And strained her spirit to the key
Of their unearthly minstrelsy.
Thus from her infancy, she was
A pupil in the school of dreams,
A gazer in the magic glass,
Wherein the curtained future seems
A spectacle, and a survey,
Half coloured with the hues of day.