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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Switzerland and Austria: Vol. XVI. 1876–79.

Switzerland: Uri, the Lake

Lake Uri

By William Wordsworth (1770–1850)


FROM such romantic dreams, my soul, awake!

To sterner pleasure, where, by Uri’s lake,

In Nature’s pristine majesty outspread,

Winds neither road nor path for foot to tread:

The rocks rise naked as a wall, or stretch

Far o’er the water, hung with groves of beech;

Aerial pines from loftier steeps ascend,

Nor stop but where creation seems to end.

Yet here and there, if mid the savage scene

Appears a scanty plot of smiling green,

Up from the lake a zigzag path will creep,

To reach a small wood-hut hung boldly on the steep.

Before those thresholds (never can they know

The face of traveller passing to and fro)

No peasant leans upon his pole, to tell

For whom at morning tolled the funeral bell;

Their watch-dog ne’er his angry bark foregoes,

Touched by the beggar’s moan of human woes;

The shady porch ne’er offered a cool seat

To pilgrims overcome by summer’s heat.