| |
| WITHIN the Switzer’s varied land, | |
| When summer chases high the snow, | |
| You ’ll meet with many a youthful band | |
| Of strangers wandering to and fro: | |
| Through hamlet, town, and healing bath | 5 |
| They haste and rest as chance may call, | |
| No day without its mountain-path, | |
| No path without its waterfall. | |
| |
| They make the hours themselves repay, | |
| However well or ill be shared, | 10 |
| Content that they should wing their way, | |
| Unchecked, unreckoned, uncompared: | |
| For though the hills unshapely rise, | |
| And lie the colors poorly bright, | |
| They mould them by their cheerful eyes, | 15 |
| And paint them with their spirit’s light. | |
| |
| Strong in their youthfulness, they use | |
| The energies their souls possess; | |
| And if some wayward scene refuse | |
| To pay its part of loveliness,— | 20 |
| Onward they pass, nor less enjoy | |
| For what they leave;—and far from me | |
| Be every thought that would destroy | |
| A charm of that simplicity! | |
| |
| But if one blot on that white page | 25 |
| From doubt or misery’s pen be thrown,— | |
| If once the sense awake, that age | |
| Is counted not by years alone,— | |
| Then no more grand and wondrous things! | |
| No active happinesses more! | 30 |
| The wounded heart has lost its wings, | |
| And change can only fret the sore. | |
| |
| Yet there is calm for those that weep, | |
| Where the divine Italian sea | |
| Rests like a maiden hushed asleep | 35 |
| And breathing low and measuredly; | |
| Where all the sunset-purpled ground, | |
| Fashioned by those delicious airs, | |
| Seems strewed with softest cushions round | |
| For weary heads to loose their cares; | 40 |
| |
| Where Nature offers, at all hours, | |
| Out of her free imperial store, | |
| That perfect beauty their weak powers | |
| Can help her to create no more, | |
| And grateful for that ancient aid, | 45 |
| Comes forth to comfort and relieve | |
| Those minds in prostrate sorrow laid, | |
| Bidding them open and receive! | |
| |
| Though still ’t is hardly she that gives, | |
| For Nature reigns not there alone, | 50 |
| A mightier queen beside her lives, | |
| Whom she can serve but not dethrone; | |
| For she is fallen from the state | |
| That waited on her Eden-prime, | |
| And art remains by sin and fate | 55 |
| Unscathed, for art is not of time. | |
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