| |
| “I LAUGH to think thou wilt compare | |
| Thy mountain with our lowland air; | |
| Thy barren rocks, and leafless pines | |
| To blossom’d trees, and laden vines; | |
| Thy crags, where nought but eagles dwell, | 5 |
| To shady groves where thrushes twitter; | |
| Thy bowers unsought of those who tell | |
| Soft secrets when the moonbeams glitter. | |
| Seest thou yon curling cloud of mist, | |
| A rural dwelling half concealing? | 10 |
| There lives one, innocently kiss’d | |
| Of lips whose sweets are past revealing— | |
| A gentle girl who gave her hand | |
| To a poor youth, and ne’er repines | |
| For the proud palace, and broad land, | 15 |
| But finds love richer than the mines. | |
| |
| Thou canst not have the warbling rill, | |
| The village spire, and mossy mill, | |
| And hoary oaks, and nodding firs, | |
| And aspin with a breath that stirs; | 20 |
| And lowing herds and fleecy flocks | |
| Are strangers to thy clime of rocks.” | |
| |
| I heard the Spirit of mid air | |
| Say to this little lowland Fay, | |
| “Your hills are green, and valleys fair, | 25 |
| Your rivers gently well away; | |
| But meads and valleys lovelier glow, | |
| And gentler seems the river’s flow, | |
| Seen from the mountains high. | |
| Oh! could you see beyond the girth | 30 |
| Which circumscribes this narrow earth, | |
| What splendors for your eye! | |
| |
| From eve to morn we nothing do | |
| But gaze upon the realms of blue | |
| And wonder at the sky; | 35 |
| While the bright stars of endless spheres | |
| Measure the rapid dance of years. | |
| |
| “We have the sunbeams while ye lay | |
| In darkness in the vale below; | |
| We see proud navies plough their way | 40 |
| Along the deep in paths of snow. | |
| The clime of hoary rocks our choice, | |
| Companioned with the thunder’s voice, | |
| The lightning, and the bow. | |
| Nature’s sublimity’s aloft, | 45 |
| Her littleness below. | |
| Ye have the delicate and soft, | |
| But we the goodlier show. | |
| |
| “When o’er yon lowland fell disease | |
| Breathes his stern curse, and thousands fall; | 50 |
| When with a broken heart ye wreathe | |
| The bridal favor with the pall, | |
| Then come the shuddering crowd away | |
| From the green vales ye praise so high, | |
| And seek, amidst my turrets gray, | 55 |
| A healthful and salubrious sky. | |
| |
| “We are the keepers of the free, | |
| Who shun the lands which tyrants sway. | |
| He who would keep unbent his knee | |
| To such, should in the mountains stay. | 60 |
| He well deserves a realm of rocks; | |
| We give it him, the crag that blocks | |
| The despot’s feet away— | |
| And he, redeem’d from slavery thus, | |
| Shall live and feel like one of us.” | 65 |
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