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(Childe Harold, Canto iii. Stanzas 99–104.)
CLARENS! sweet Clarens, birthplace of deep Love! | |
| Thine air is the young breath of passionate thought; | |
| Thy trees take root in Love; the snows above | |
| The very Glaciers have his colours caught, | |
| And sunset into rose-hues sees them wrought | 5 |
| By rays which sleep there lovingly: the rocks, | |
| The permanent crags, tell here of Love, who sought | |
| In them a refuge from the worldly shocks, | |
| Which stir and sting the soul with hope that woos, then mocks. | |
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| Clarens! by heavenly feet thy paths are trod,— | 10 |
| Undying Love’s, who here ascends a throne | |
| To which the steps are mountains; where the god | |
| Is a pervading life and light,—so shown | |
| Not on those summits solely, nor alone | |
| In the still cave and forest; o’er the flower | 15 |
| His eye is sparkling, and his breath hath blown, | |
| His soft and summer breath, whose tender power | |
| Passes the strength of storms in their most desolate hour. | |
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| All things are here of him; from the black pines, | |
| Which are his shade on high, and the loud roar | 20 |
| Of torrents, where he listeneth, to the vines | |
| Which slope his green path downward to the shore, | |
| Where the bow’d waters meet him, and adore, | |
| Kissing his feet with murmurs; and the wood, | |
| The covert of old trees, with trunks all hoar, | 25 |
| But light leaves, young as joy, stands where it stood, | |
| Offering to him, and his, a populous solitude. | |
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| A populous solitude of bees and birds, | |
| And fairy-form’d and many-colour’d things, | |
| Who worship him with notes more sweet than words, | 30 |
| And innocently open their glad wings, | |
| Fearless and full of life: the gush of springs, | |
| And fall of lofty fountains, and the bend | |
| Of stirring branches, and the bud which brings | |
| The swiftest thought of beauty, here extend, | 35 |
| Mingling, and made by Love, unto one mighty end. | |
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| He who hath loved not, here would learn that lore, | |
| And make his heart a spirit; he who knows | |
| That tender mystery, will love the more, | |
| For this is Love’s recess, where vain men’s woes, | 40 |
| And the world’s waste, have driven him far from those, | |
| For ’tis his nature to advance or die; | |
| He stands not still, but or decays, or grows | |
| Into a boundless blessing, which may vie | |
| With the immortal lights, in its eternity. | 45 |
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| ’Twas not for fiction chose Rousseau this spot, | |
| Peopling it with affections; but he found | |
| It was the scene which passion must allot | |
| To the mind’s purified beings; ’twas the ground | |
| Where early Love his Psyche’s zone unbound, | 50 |
| And hallow’d it with loveliness: ’tis lone, | |
| And wonderful, and deep, and hath a sound, | |
| And sense, and sight of sweetness; here the Rhone | |
| Hath spread himself a couch, the Alps have rear’d a throne. | |
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