| |
| AT the old Genevan wharf she lay, | |
| Where the Jardin Anglais looks on the bay,— | |
| That steamer small, with a name so regal: | |
| Lake Leman was tempting blue, that day, | |
| And as part of her brood we sailed away,— | 5 |
| Our national totem,—“L’Aigle.” | |
| |
| Has the world of travel a purer joy | |
| Than the ramparts grim of old Savoy, | |
| As that day we sailed apast and down them?— | |
| Peak upon peak rising high, more high, | 10 |
| And some with their heads that reached the sky,— | |
| With stern Mont Blanc to crown them? | |
| |
| With Jura’s steeps on the other side | |
| Of that lake with the dangerous placid tide; | |
| And below, to the edge, the green hills sloping: | 15 |
| On one hand the mother, tender-eyed, | |
| On the other the father, high in pride, | |
| O’er their blue-eyed darling stooping! | |
| |
| With Beau Rivage, with sweet Lausanne, | |
| With the hostel named for “milord Biron,” | 20 |
| Where he heard Childe Harold’s echoing thunder: | |
| One feast to the eye, sailing on and on, | |
| Till the cliffs hung dark over old Chillon, | |
| With the castle nestling under! | |
| |
| Time has gently dealt with the stern old pile, | 25 |
| And few the stones that have dropped erewhile | |
| From the architect’s featly and graceful shaping: | |
| Though behind it a railway comes to spoil | |
| The Past, with a hint of modern toil | |
| And a means for romance escaping. | 30 |
| |
| Dark rise the old turrets,—dark, yet fair. | |
| Round tower in graceful blending with square, | |
| And here a tall keep over all arisen; | |
| Till the gazer thinks what a fortune rare | |
| For a limited space to linger there, | 35 |
| Even calling one’s home a prison! | |
| |
| And fair as ever the sun-rays fall | |
| On the lapping waters under the wall; | |
| And the view across still keeps its glory,— | |
| Over the lake to the ramparts tall, | 40 |
| And the great snow-mountains crowning all | |
| With that presence mighty as hoary. | |
| |
| But what dearer view was within embraced, | |
| When over the drawbridge height we paced, | |
| Under the archways gray and moulding, | 45 |
| And stood in the midst of that stony waste | |
| Where the hand of genius one mark has placed | |
| For the ages’ long beholding, | |
| |
| Savoy’s stern Dukes rule here no more: | |
| There is silence on that presence-floor | 50 |
| Where herald and king bandied feudal manners; | |
| And the free Swiss Cantons there keep in store | |
| Of rusty firelocks many a score | |
| And a dozen of red-cross banners. | |
| |
| And deeper within comes room on room, | 55 |
| Of still deepening infamy and gloom, | |
| Beneath and above the waters’ level,— | |
| Where the victims of old found cruel doom, | |
| The prison a scaffold, the lake a tomb, | |
| And the headsman a hooded devil. | 60 |
| |
| And then,—the chamber of Bonnivard, | |
| Of victims at once the evilest-starred, | |
| And the luckiest far, that, one summer morning | |
| The English lord saw his place of guard, | |
| And the old renown of the castle marred | 65 |
| With a glory that came sans warning. | |
| |
| For who now visits the dungeons old, | |
| But to see those “seven pillars of Gothic mould,” | |
| With the one still bearing the broken fetters, | |
| And the window ’neath which the blue lake rolled, | 70 |
| And through which the birds of lost freedom told, | |
| As if they were wrong’s abettors? | |
| |
| And what, when the old pile tumbles down, | |
| Will give to its stones their best renown? | |
| Some puzzling and dim historic question? | 75 |
| No!—the story-in-rhyme, that makes its crown, | |
| One day at Veytaux-Chillon set down | |
| By a guest with a bad digestion! | |
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