| |
[First published 1853. Reprinted 1854, ’57.]
WAS 1 it a dream? We sail’d, I thought we sail’d, | |
| Martin and I, down a green Alpine stream, | |
| Under o’erhanging pines; the morning sun, | |
| On the wet umbrage of their glossy tops, | |
| On the red pinings of their forest floor, | 5 |
| Drew a warm scent abroad; behind the pines | |
| The mountain skirts, with all their sylvan change | |
| Of bright-leaf’d chestnuts, and moss’d walnut-trees, | |
| And the frail scarlet-berried ash, began. | |
| Swiss chalets glitter’d on the dewy slopes, | 10 |
| And from some swarded shelf high up, there came | |
| Notes of wild pastoral music: over all | |
| Rang’d, diamond-bright, the eternal wall of snow. | |
| Upon the mossy rocks at the stream’s edge, | |
| Back’d by the pines, a plank-built cottage stood, | 15 |
| Bright in the sun; the climbing gourd-plant’s leaves | |
| Muffled its walls, and on the stone-strewn roof | |
| Lay the warm golden gourds; golden, within, | |
| Under the eaves, peer’d rows of Indian corn. | |
| We shot beneath the cottage with the stream. | 20 |
| On the brown rude-carv’d balcony two Forms | |
| Came forth—Olivia’s, Marguerite! and thine. | |
| Clad were they both in white, flowers in their breast; 2 | |
| Straw hats bedeck’d their heads, with ribbons blue | |
| Which wav’d, and on their shoulders fluttering play’d. | 25 |
| They saw us, they conferr’d; their bosoms heav’d, | |
| And more than mortal impulse fill’d their eyes. | |
| Their lips mov’d; their white arms, wav’d eagerly, | |
| Flash’d once, like falling streams:—we rose, we gaz’d: | |
| One moment, on the rapid’s top, our boat | 30 |
| Hung pois’d—and then the darting River of Life, | |
| Loud thundering, bore us by: swift, swift it foam’d; | |
| Black under cliffs it rac’d, round headlands shone. | |
| Soon the plank’d cottage ’mid the sun-warm’d pines | |
| Faded, the moss, the rocks; us burning Plains | 35 |
| Bristled with cities, us the Sea receiv’d. | |
