Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Switzerland and Austria: Vol. XVI. 1876–79. | | | | Austria: Carpathian Mountains, Hungary | | The Frontier | | Edna Dean Proctor (1829–1923) |
| | | O THE GLORIOUS purple line | |
| Of the mountains lifted along the west! | |
| Bright, in the sun, their summits shine; | |
| Dark, in the shade, their valleys rest. | |
| Cossack and Tartar may hold the plains, | 5 |
| And the rivers that creep to a tideless sea; | |
| Mine be the heights where the eagle reigns, | |
| And cataracts thunder, and winds blow free! | |
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| Not for the steepe, with its desert sheen, | |
| From Austria’s border to China’s wall, | 10 |
| Would I give the upland pasture’s green, | |
| The beech-tree’s shadow, the brooklet’s fall. | |
| Vanish, O weary, mournful level! | |
| Welcome, O wind my brow that fans! | |
| In the splendor of earth again I revel, | 15 |
| Greeting the purple Carpathians! | | | | |
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