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MORE pleased, my foot the hidden margin roves | |
| Of Como, bosomed deep in chestnut groves. | |
| No meadows thrown between, the giddy steeps | |
| Tower, bare or sylvan, from the narrow deeps. | |
| To towns, whose shades of no rude noise complain, | 5 |
| From ringing team apart and grating wain,— | |
| To flat-roofed towns, that touch the water’s bound, | |
| Or lurk in woody sunless glens profound, | |
| Or, from the bending rocks, obtrusive cling, | |
| And o’er the whitened wave their shadows fling,— | 10 |
| The pathway leads, as round the steeps it twines; | |
| And silence loves its purple roof of vines. | |
| The loitering traveller hence, at evening, sees | |
| From rock-hewn steps the sail between the trees; | |
| Or marks, mid opening cliffs, fair dark-eyed maids | 15 |
| Tend the small harvest of their garden glades; | |
| Or stops the solemn mountain-shades to view | |
| Stretch o’er the pictured mirror broad and blue, | |
| And track the yellow lights from steep to steep, | |
| As up the opposing hills they slowly creep. | 20 |
| Aloft, here, half a village shines, arrayed | |
| In golden light; half hides itself in shade: | |
| While, from amid the darkened roofs, the spire, | |
| Restlessly flashing, seems to mount like fire: | |
| There, all unshaded, blazing forests throw | 25 |
| Rich golden verdure on the lake below. | |
| Slow glides the sail along the illumined shore, | |
| And steals into the shade the lazy oar; | |
| Soft bosoms breathe around contagious sighs, | |
| And amorous music on the water dies. | 30 |
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| How blest, delicious scene! the eye that greets | |
| Thy open beauties or thy lone retreats,— | |
| Beholds the unwearied sweep of wood that scales | |
| Thy cliffs; the endless waters of thy vales; | |
| Thy lowly cots that sprinkle all the shore, | 35 |
| Each with its household boat beside the door; | |
| Thy torrent shooting from the clear-blue sky; | |
| Thy towns, that cleave, like swallows’ nests, on high; | |
| That glimmer hoar in eve’s last light, descried | |
| Dim from the twilight water’s shaggy side, | 40 |
| Whence lutes and voices down the enchanted woods | |
| Steal, and compose the oar-forgotten floods; | |
| Thy lake, that, streaked or dappled, blue or gray, | |
| Mid smoking woods gleams hid from morning’s ray | |
| Slow-travelling down the western hills, to enfold | 45 |
| Its green-tinged margin in a blaze of gold; | |
| Thy glittering steeples, whence the matin bell | |
| Calls forth the woodman from his desert cell, | |
| And quickens the blithe sound of oars that pass | |
| Along the steaming lake, to early mass. | 50 |
| But now farewell to each and all,—adieu | |
| To every charm, and last and chief to you, | |
| Ye lovely maidens that in noontide shade | |
| Rest near your little plots of wheaten glade; | |
| To all that binds the soul in powerless trance, | 55 |
| Lip-dewing song, and ringlet-tossing dance; | |
| Where sparling eyes and breaking smiles illume | |
| The sylvan cabin’s lute-enlivened gloom. | |
| Alas! the very murmur of the streams | |
| Breathes o’er the failing soul voluptuous dreams, | 60 |
| While slavery, forcing the sunk mind to dwell | |
| On joys that might disgrace the captive’s cell, | |
| Her shameless timbrel shakes on Como’s marge, | |
| And lures from bay to bay the vocal barge. | |
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