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(From Italy)
DAY glimmered and I went, a gentle breeze | |
| Ruffling the Leman Lake. Wave after wave, | |
| If such they might be called, dashed as in sport, | |
| Not anger, with the pebbles on the beach | |
| Making wild music, and far westward caught | 5 |
| The sunbeam, where, alone and as entranced, | |
| Counting the hours, the fisher in his skiff | |
| Lay with his circular and dotted line | |
| On the bright waters. When the heart of man | |
| Is light with hope, all things are sure to please; | 10 |
| And soon a passage-boat swept gayly by, | |
| Laden with peasant-girls and fruits and flowers, | |
| And many a chanticleer and partlet caged | |
| For Vevey’s market-place,—a motley group | |
| Seen through the silvery haze. But soon ’t was gone. | 15 |
| The shifting sail flapped idly to and fro, | |
| Then bore them off. I am not one of those | |
| So dead to all things in this visible world, | |
| So wondrously profound, as to move on | |
| In the sweet light of heaven, like him of old 1 | 20 |
| (His name is justly in the Calendar) | |
| Who through the day pursued this pleasant path | |
| That winds beside the mirror of all beauty, | |
| And when at eve his fellow-pilgrims sate, | |
| Discoursing of the lake, asked where it was. | 25 |
| They marvelled, as they might; and so must all, | |
| Seeing what now I saw: for now ’t was day, | |
| And the bright sun was in the firmament, | |
| A thousand shadows of a thousand hues | |
| Checkering the clear expanse. Awhile his orb | 30 |
| Hung o’er thy trackless fields of snow, Mont Blanc, | |
| Thy seas of ice and ice-built promontories, | |
| That change their shapes forever as in sport; | |
| Then travelled onward and went down behind | |
| The pine-clad heights of Jura, lighting up | 35 |
| The woodman’s casement, and perchance his axe | |
| Borne homeward through the forest in his hand; | |
| And on the edge of some o’erhanging cliff, | |
| That dungeon-fortress 2 never to be named, | |
| Where, like a lion taken in the toils, | 40 |
| Toussaint breathed out his brave and generous spirit. | |
| Little did he, who sent him there to die, | |
| Think, when he gave the word, that he himself, | |
| Great as he was, the greatest among men, | |
| Should in like manner be so soon conveyed | 45 |
| Athwart the deep, and to a rock so small | |
| Amid the countless multitude of waves, | |
| That ships have gone and sought it, and returned, | |
| Saying it was not! | |
