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I. A LOWLY hut, stone piled and redly stained | |
| With all of accident cold years have brought; | |
| A mother and her child in silent thought | |
| Sitting beside the river scarce contained | |
| From kissing with its gray and brattling foam | 5 |
| Their feet, where monstrous over their lone home | |
| Yon awful Alp in battlemented wall | |
| Rears his sad forehead, from whose piny crest | |
| The torrent springs to light and happier life! | |
| It spurns the cloud where the unheeded call | 10 |
| Of birds is joyous mid the blinding strife | |
| Of avalanches in the still deep noon, | |
| Veiling the pines, and the convulséd tune | |
| Of gray streams hushing in their arrowy fall. | |
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II. A temple for the Father, which his hand | 15 |
| Hath reared for these his lowliest worshippers, | |
| Arched with Heaven’s sapphire and with whispering firs, | |
| Garnishing these walls sublime which ever stand | |
| With many-colored shape of column fair, | |
| And granite peak dim in the glittering air! | 20 |
| A lowly flock who need no pealing swell | |
| Of choristers within quaint minster aisles, | |
| Where God hath shamed all boastful human piles, | |
| And whose cloud swings their awful Sabbath bell; | |
| While silently they bow the thankful eye, | 25 |
| And kneel to Him whose hymn is there so well | |
| Sung by his torrents leaping from the sky; | |
| Thus live they, shut as in a holy cell, | |
| Gracing their simple lives with natural piety. | |
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