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(From Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage)
CLEAR, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake, | |
| With the wild world I dwelt in, is a thing | |
| Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake | |
| Earth’s troubled waters for a purer spring. | |
| This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing | 5 |
| To waft me from distraction; once I loved | |
| Torn ocean’s roar, but thy soft murmuring | |
| Sounds sweet as if a sister’s voice reproved, | |
| That I with stern delights should e’er have been so moved. | |
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| It is the hush of night, and all between | 10 |
| Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear, | |
| Mellowed and mingling, yet distinctly seen, | |
| Save darkened Jura, whose capt heights appear | |
| Precipitously steep; and, drawing near, | |
| There breathes a living fragrance from the shore, | 15 |
| Of flowers yet fresh with childhood; on the ear | |
| Drops the light drip of the suspended oar, | |
| Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more. | |
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| He is an evening reveller, who makes | |
| His life an infancy, and sings his fill; | 20 |
| At intervals, some bird from out the brakes | |
| Starts into voice a moment, then is still. | |
| There seems a floating whisper on the hill; | |
| But that is fancy, for the starlight dews | |
| All silently their tears of love instil, | 25 |
| Weeping themselves away, till they infuse | |
| Deep into Nature’s breast the spirit of her hues. | |
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| Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven! | |
| If in your bright leaves we would read the fate | |
| Of men and empires,—’t is to be forgiven, | 30 |
| That in our aspirations to be great, | |
| Our destinies o’erleap their mortal state, | |
| And claim a kindred with you; for ye are | |
| A beauty and a mystery, and create | |
| In us such love and reverence from afar, | 35 |
| That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a star. | |
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| All heaven and earth are still,—though not in sleep, | |
| But breathless, as we grow when feeling most; | |
| And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep:— | |
| All heaven and earth are still: from the high host | 40 |
| Of stars, to the lulled lake and mountain-coast, | |
| All is concentred in a life intense, | |
| Where not a beam nor air nor leaf is lost, | |
| But hath a part of being, and a sense | |
| Of that which is of all Creator and defence. * * * * * | 45 |
| The sky is changed!—and such a change! O night | |
| And storm and darkness, ye are wondrous strong, | |
| Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light | |
| Of a dark eye in woman! Far along, | |
| From peak to peak, the rattling crags among | 50 |
| Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone cloud, | |
| But every mountain now hath found a tongue, | |
| And Jura answers, through her misty shroud, | |
| Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud! | |
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| And this is in the night: most glorious night! | 55 |
| Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be | |
| A sharer in thy fierce and far delight,— | |
| A portion of the tempest and of thee! | |
| How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea, | |
| And the big rain comes dancing to the earth! | 60 |
| And now again ’t is black,—and now, the glee | |
| Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain-mirth; | |
| As if they did rejoice o’er a young earthquake’s birth. | |
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