77
While pastoral pipes and streams the landscape lull,
And bells of passing mules that tinkle dull,
In solemn shapes before the admiring eye
Dilated hang the misty pines on high,
Huge convent domes with pinnacles and towers,
And antique castles seen through drizzling showers.
From such romantic dreams my soul awake,
Lo! Fear looks silent down on Uri's lake;
Where by the unpathwayed margin still and dread
Was never heard the plodding peasant's tread:
Tower like a wall the naked rocks, or reach
Far o'er the secret water dark with beach;
More high, to where creation seems to end,
Shade above shade the desert pines ascend.
Yet, with his infants, man undaunted creeps
And hangs his small wood-hut upon the steeps,
Where'er, below, amid the savage scene
Peeps out a little speck of smiling green.
A garden-plot the mountain air perfumes,
Mid the dark pines a little orchard blooms;
A zig-zag path from the domestic skiff,
Threading the painful crag, surmounts the cliff.
