Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Switzerland and Austria: Vol. XVI. 1876–79. | | | | Switzerland: Hospenthal | | Hospenthal | | Nathaniel Langdon Frothingham (1793–1870) |
| | | FULL dawn upon the heights of St. Gothard! | |
| Wild nature and rude life! | |
| And close-heaped dwellings where few comforts are, | |
| Seemed with them both at strife. | |
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| The desolate church spoke little to the soul; | 5 |
| And yet its claim would put, | |
| When the quaint round-tower on its rocky knoll | |
| Invited not the foot. | |
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| The stranger entered, peering dimly round; | |
| No being met his sight; | 10 |
| No sign of motion and no breath of sound | |
| Stirred in that early light. | |
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| He walked and gazed and mused awhile, when, look! | |
| In funeral trappings dressed, | |
| A child its last mysterious slumber took, | 15 |
| Christ’s emblems on its breast. | |
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| Close by the altar’s steps they laid it out,— | |
| Out from all harm and dearth,— | |
| And nearer than elsewhere, they did not doubt, | |
| To the God of heaven and earth. | 20 |
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| He was not now alone; the newly dead | |
| A strange, sad presence made, | |
| Which all night long its unheard lesson read, | |
| Through the deep double shade. | |
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| No, not alone: lo, spirits back from the Lord, | 25 |
| A loved, lamented crowd! | |
| He bent, like Jacob, o’er his staff, and poured | |
| His matin-prayer aloud. | | | | |
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