Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

III.

EXTRACTS

FROM

DESCRIPTIVE SKETCHES TAKEN DURING A PEDESTRIAN

TOUR IN THE ALPS.

(Published in 1793.)

PLEASURES OF THE PEDESTRIAN.

No sad vacuities his heart annoy ;—
Blows not a Zephyr but it whispers joy;
For him lost flowers their idle sweets exhale;

He tastes the meanest note that swells the gale;
For him sod-seats the cottage-door adorn,
And peeps the far-off spire, his evening bourn!
Dear is the forest frowning o'er his head,

And dear the green-sward to his velvet tread;
Moves there a cloud o'er mid-day's flaming eye?
Upward he looks-" and calls it luxury;"
Kind Nature's charities his steps attend,
In every babbling brook he finds a friend,
While chast'ning thoughts of sweetest use, bestowed
By Wisdom, moralize his pensive road.
Host of his welcome inn, the noon-tide bower,

To his spare meal he calls the passing poor;

He views the Sun uplift his golden fire,

Or sink, with heart alive like * Memnon's lyre;
Blesses the Moon that comes with kindest ray
To light him shaken by his viewless way.
With bashful fear no cottage children steal
From him, a brother at the cottage meal,
His humble looks no shy restraint impart,
Around him plays at will the virgin heart.
While unsuspended wheels the village dance,
The maidens eye him with inquiring glance,
Much wondering what sad stroke of crazing Care
Or desperate Love could lead a wanderer there,

I SIGH at hoary Chartreuse' doom,

Where now is fled that Power whose frown severe Tamed" sober Reason" till she crouched in fear? That breathed a death-like peace these woods around;

The cloister startles at the gleam of arms,

And Blasphemy the shuddering fane alarms;

L

* The lyre of Memnon is reported to have emitted melancholy or cheerful tones, as it was touched by the sun's evening or morning rays.

Nod the cloud-piercing pines their troubled heads,
Spires, rocks, and lawns, a browner night o'erspreads.
Strong terror checks the female peasant's sighs,
And start the astonished shades at female eyes.
The thundering tube the aged angler hears,"
And swells the groaning torrent with his tears.
From Bruno's forest screams the affrighted jay,
And slow the insulted eagle wheels away.
The cross with hideous laughter Demons mock,
By angels planted on the aereal rock.
The "parting Genius" sighs with hollow breath
Along the mystic streams of + Life and Death.
Swelling the outcry 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 chesnut groves.
No meadows thrown between, the giddy steeps
Tower, bare or sylvan, from the narrów deeps.

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

‡ Name of one of the vallies of the Chartreuse.

To towns, whose shades of no rude sound complain,
To ringing team unknown 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;
Wild round the steeps the little pathway twines,
And Silence loves its purple roof of vines.
The viewless lingerer 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
Stretch, o'er the pictured mirror, broad and blue,
Tracking the yellow sun from steep to steep,

As

up the opposing hills, with tortoise foot, they creep. Here half a village shines, in gold arrayed,

Bright as the moon; half hides itself in shade.
From the dark sylvan roofs the restless spire
Inconstant glancing, mounts like springing fire.
There, all unshaded, blazing forests throw
Rich golden verdure on the waves below.
Slow glides the sail along th' illumined shore,

And steals into the shade the lazy oar.

Soft bosoms breathe around contagious sighs,

And amorous music on the water dies.

How bless'd, delicious scene! the eye that greets Thy open beauties, or thy lone retreats;

Th' unwearied sweep of wood thy cliffs that scales; The never-ending waters of thy vales;

The cots, those dim religious groves embower,

Or, under rocks that from the water tower
Insinuated, sprinkling all the shore,

Each with his household boat beside the door,
Whose flaccid sails in forms fantastic droop,
Bright'ning the gloom where thick the forests stoop;
-Thy torrents shooting from the clear-blue sky,
Thy towns, like swallows' nests that cleave on high;
That glimmer hoar in eve's last light, descry'd

Dim from the twilight water's shaggy side,
Whence lutes and voices down the enchanted woods

Steal, and compose the oar-forgotten floods,
While Evening's solemn bird melodious weeps,
Heard, by star-spotted bays, beneath the steeps;

-Thy lake, mid smoking woods, that blue and grey
Gleams, streaked or dappled, hid from morning's ray
Slow travelling down the western hills, to fold
Its green-tinged margin in a blaze of gold;

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »