Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Switzerland and Austria: Vol. XVI. 1876–79. | | | | Switzerland: Uri, the Lake | | Lake Uri | | William Wordsworth (1770–1850) |
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FROM such romantic dreams, my soul, awake! | |
| To sterner pleasure, where, by Uri’s lake, | |
| In Nature’s pristine majesty outspread, | |
| Winds neither road nor path for foot to tread: | |
| The rocks rise naked as a wall, or stretch | 5 |
| Far o’er the water, hung with groves of beech; | |
| Aerial pines from loftier steeps ascend, | |
| Nor stop but where creation seems to end. | |
| Yet here and there, if mid the savage scene | |
| Appears a scanty plot of smiling green, | 10 |
| Up from the lake a zigzag path will creep, | |
| To reach a small wood-hut hung boldly on the steep. | |
| Before those thresholds (never can they know | |
| The face of traveller passing to and fro) | |
| No peasant leans upon his pole, to tell | 15 |
| For whom at morning tolled the funeral bell; | |
| Their watch-dog ne’er his angry bark foregoes, | |
| Touched by the beggar’s moan of human woes; | |
| The shady porch ne’er offered a cool seat | |
| To pilgrims overcome by summer’s heat. | 20 | | | |
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