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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 narrow 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;

From thickly-glittering spires the matin bell
Calling the woodman from his desert cell,
A summons to the sound of oars, that pass,
Spotting the steaming deeps, to early mass;
Slow swells the service o'er the water born,
While fill each pause the ringing woods of morn.

Now, passing Urseren's open vale serene,

Her quiet streams, and hills of downy green,
Plunge with the Russ embrowned by Terror's breath,
Where danger roofs the narrow walks of death;

By floods, that, thundering from their dizzy height,
Swell more gigantic on the stedfast sight;
Black drizzling crags, that beaten by the din,
Vibrate, as if a voice complained within;
Bare steeps, where Desolation stalks afraid,
Unstedfast, by a blasted yew upstayed;

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By* cells whose image, trembling as he prays,
Awe-struck, the kneeling peasant scarce surveys;

* The Catholic religion prevails here: these cells are, as is well known, very common in the Catholic countries, planted, like Roman tombs, along the road side.

Loose hanging rocks the Day's bless'd eye that hide,
And crosses reared to Death on every side,
Which with cold kiss Devotion planted near,
And bending water'd with the human tear;
That faded "silent" from her upward eye,
Unmoved with each rude form of Danger nigh,
Fixed on the anchor left by him who saves
Alike in whelming snows and roaring waves.

On as we move a softer prospect opes,
Calm huts, and lawns between, and sylvan slopes.
While mists, suspended on the expiring gale,
Moveless o'er-hang the deep secluded vale,
The beams of evening, slipping soft between,
Light up of tranquil joy a sober scene.
Winding its dark-green wood and emerald glade,
The still vale lengthens underneath the shade;
While in soft gloom the scattering bowers recede,
Green dewy lights adorn the freshened mead,
On the low + brown wood-huts delighted sleep
Along the brightened gloom reposing deep.

* Crosses commemorative of the deaths of travellers by the fall of snow and other accidents, very common along this dreadful road.

The houses in the more retired Swiss vallies are all built of wood.

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