Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

Switzerland: St. Gothard

The Saint Gothard Pass

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)

THIS is the highest point. Two ways the rivers

Leap down to different seas, and as they roll

Grow deep and still, and their majestic presence

Becomes a benefaction to the towns

They visit, wandering silently among them,

Like patriarchs old among their shining tents.

How bleak and bare it is! Nothing but mosses

Grow on these rocks.

Yet are they not forgotten;

Beneficent Nature sends the mists to feed them.

See yonder little cloud, that, borne aloft

So tenderly by the wind, floats fast away

Over the snowy peaks! It seems to me

The body of St. Catherine, borne by angels!

Thou art St. Catherine, and invisible angels

Bear thee across these chasms and precipices,

Lest thou shouldst dash thy feet against a stone!

Would I were borne unto my grave, as she was,

Upon angelic shoulders! Even now

I seem uplifted by them, light as air!

What sound is that?

The tumbling avalanches!

How awful, yet how beautiful!
These are

The voices of the mountains! Thus they ope

Their snowy lips, and speak unto each other,

In the primeval language, lost to man.

What land is this that spreads itself beneath us?

Italy! Italy!
Land of the Madonna!

How beautiful it is! It seems a garden

Of Paradise!