| |
| NATURE’S fair, fruitless, aimless world | |
| Men take and mould at will: | |
| Scoop havens from the wasteful sea; | |
| Tame heaths to green fertility, | |
| And grind their roadway through the hill. | 5 |
| |
| Another aspect now she dons, | |
| Changed by the hands of men; | |
| What harvest plains of golden hope, | |
| What vineyards on the amber slope, | |
| What lurid forge-lights in the glen! | 10 |
| |
| Yet still some relic she reserves | |
| Of what was all her own; | |
| Keeps the wild surface of the moor, | |
| Or where the glacier-torrents roar, | |
| Reigns o’er gray piles of wrinkled stone. | 15 |
| |
| And though man’s daily strengthening sway | |
| Contracts her precinct fair, | |
| Yet round smooth sweeps of vine-set land | |
| Her vaporous ranks of summit stand | |
| As ghosts in morning’s silent air: | 20 |
| |
| Or on vast slopes unploughed, untrod, | |
| She vindicates her right; | |
| Green billows of primeval copse, | |
| Tossing a myriad spiry tops | |
| ’Neath the full zenith-flood of light. | 25 |
| |
| Or where, whilst o’er Rhone’s azure lake | |
| Heaven’s azure stainless lies, | |
| From the White Mount the white clouds strike, | |
| As if volcano-born, or like | |
| The smoke of some great sacrifice. | 30 |
| |
