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Home  »  Poems of Places An Anthology in 31 Volumes  »  Midnight at Geneva

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Switzerland and Austria: Vol. XVI. 1876–79.

Switzerland: Geneva, the Lake (Lake Leman)

Midnight at Geneva

By Francis Turner Palgrave (1824–1897)

THE AZURE lake is argent now

Beneath the pale moonshine:

I seek a sign of hope in heaven:

Fair Pole-star! thou art mine.

A thousand other beacons blaze,

I follow thee alone,

Beyond the shadowy Jura range,

The Jura and the Rhone;

Beyond the purpling vineyards trim

Of sunny Clos Vougeot;

Beyond where Seine’s brown waves beneath

The Norman orchards go;

Till, where the silver waters wash

The white-walled northern isle,

My heart outruns these laggart limbs

To the long-sighed-for smile.