“ While the valley lies in shadow and the peaks are all aglow—
Where the airs of heaven blow
'Twixt the pine woods and the snow,20
And the shades of evening deepen in the valley far below:
They will scale the mountain strongholds that in days of old you won,
They will plod behind a lantern ere the rising of the sun,
On a 'grat' or in a chimney, on the steep and dizzy slope,
For a foothold or a handhold they will diligently grope—
On the rocky, icy slope26
(Where we'll charitably hope
'Tis assistance only Moral that they're getting from a rope) ”

“ Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.10
The lightning zigzags shoot across the sky,
(Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie,)
And through the vale the rains go sweeping by;
Ah me, and when in shelter shall we be?
Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.15
Cold, dreary cold, the stormy winds feel they
O'er foreign lands and foreign seas that stray.
(Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.) ”

“ And many a slope was rich in bloom20
From him that on the mountain lea
By dancing rivulets fed his flocks,
To him who sat upon the rocks,
And fluted to the morning sea.
[Pg 83] Lord Tennyson.
HELLAS
It is not only that the sun
Loves best these southern lands,
It is not for the trophies won
Of old by hero hands,
That nature wreathed in softer smiles5
Was here the bride of art;
A closer kinship claims these isles,
The love-land of the heart.
It is because the poet's dream
Still haunts each happy vale,10
That peopled every grove and stream
To fit his fairy tale. ”

“ O'er sapphire chasm, and silvery snow-field cold;
Fire that o'er-floods the horizon; beacons borne
From wind-worn peak to storm-swept peak forlorn;
[Pg 39] Clear hallelujahs through heaven's arches rolled.
Never, oh never more these feet shall feel
The firm elastic tissue of upland turf,10
Or the crisp edge of the high rocks; or cling
Where the embattled cliffs beneath them reel
Through cloud-wreaths eddying like the Atlantic surf,
Far, far above the wheeling eagle's wing.
J. A. Symonds.
HAPPY IS ENGLAND
Happy is England! ”

“ Nor is aught from the foaming reef to the snow-capped, grandest14
Peak, that is over the feathery palms more fair
Than thou, so upright, so stately, and still thou standest.
And yet, O splendid ship, unhailed and nameless,
I know not if, aiming a fancy, I rightly divine
That thou hast a purpose joyful, a courage blameless,
Thy port assured in a happier land than mine.20
But for all I have given thee, beauty enough is thine,
As thou, aslant with trim tackle and shrouding,
From the proud nostril curve of a prow's line
In the offing scatterest foam, thy white sails crowding. ”

“ Fade from the distant peaks of snow:
And on the air of night
Heard accents of the eternal tongue25
Through the pine branches play:
Listened, and felt thyself grow young:
Listened, and wept——Away!
Away the dreams that but deceive!
And thou, sad Guide, adieu!30
I go; Fate drives me: but I leave
Half of my life with you.
II
Glion?——Ah, twenty years, it cuts
All meaning from a name!
White houses prank where once were huts!
Glion, but not the same,
And yet I know not. ”

“ God! sing ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice!
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!
Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost!
Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest!65
Ye eagles, play-mates of the mountain-storm! ”

“ Cintra's glorious Eden intervenes, 25 Many a vanished year and age, 88 Never, oh never more shall I behold, 38 No plainer truth appears, 118 No sound of wheels or hoof-beat breaks, 44 Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the North-west died away, 77 Nowhere I sojourn but I thence depart, 73 O beautiful beneath the magic moon, 55 O love, what hours were thine and mine, 40 Oh, come to Rome, it is a pleasant place, 56 Oh, thou Parnassus! ”

“ To find him in the valley; let the wild
Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave20
[Pg 22] The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill
Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke,
That like a broken purpose waste in air:
So waste not thou; but come; for all the vales
Await thee; azure pillars of the hearth25
Arise to thee; the children call, and I
Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound,
Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet;
Myriads of rivulets hurrying through the lawn,
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,30
And murmuring of innumerable bees.
Lord Tennyson. ”

“ Lived and laboured Albrecht Dürer, the Evangelist of Art;
Hence in silence and in sorrow, toiling still with busy hand,
[Pg 105] Like an emigrant he wandered, seeking for the Better Land.
Emigravit is the inscription on the tombstone where he lies;25
Dead he is not, but departed,—for the artist never dies.
Fairer seems the ancient city, and the sunshine seems more fair,
That he once has trod its pavement, that he once has breathed its air! ”

“ What power is this? what witchery wins my feet
To peaks so sheer they scorn the cloaking snow,
All silent as the emerald gulfs below,
Down whose ice-walls the wings of twilight beat?
What thrill of earth and heaven—most wild, most sweet—5
What answering pulse that all the senses know,
Comes leaping from the ruddy eastern glow
Where, far away, the skies and mountains meet? ”

“ For a vision of the Valais with the coming of July,
For the Oberland or Valais and the higher, purer air,
And the true delight of living, as you taste it only there!
[Pg 29] A. D. Godley.
ZERMATT CHURCHYARD
'C'était une guerre avec le Matterhorn,'
said a Zermatt peasant of the many
attempts to scale this great mountain
They warred with Nature, as of old with gods
The Titans; like the Titans too they fell,
Hurled from the summit of their hopes, and dashed
Sheer down precipitous tremendous crags,
A thousand deaths in one. ”

“ WHERE UPON APENNINE SLOPE
Where, upon Apennine slope, with the chestnut the oak-trees immingle,
[Pg 49] Where amid odorous copse bridle-paths wander and wind,
Where under mulberry-branches the diligent rivulet sparkles,
Or amid cotton and maize peasants their water-works ply,
Where, over fig-tree and orange in tier upon tier still repeated,5
Garden on garden upreared, balconies step to the sky,—
Ah, that I were far away from the crowd and the streets of the city,
Under the vine-trellis laid, O my beloved, with thee!
A. H. Clough. ”

“ Through forest, up the mountain-side.
The autumnal evening darkens round
The wind is up, and drives the rain;
While hark! far down, with strangled sound
Doth the Dead Guiers' stream complain,10
Where that wet smoke among the woods
Over his boiling cauldron broods.
Swift rush the spectral vapours white
[Pg 14] Past limestone scars with ragged pines,
Showing—then blotting from our sight.15
Halt! through the cloud-drift something shines!
High in the valley, wet and drear,
The huts of Courrerie appear.
Strike leftward! cries our guide ”

“ All along the valley while I walked to-day,5
The two and thirty years were a mist that rolls away;
For all along the valley, down thy rocky bed,
Thy living voice to me was as the voice of the dead,
And all along the valley, by rock and cave and tree,
The voice of the dead was a living voice to me.10
[Pg 23] Lord Tennyson.
CURRENTE CALAMO
Quick, painter, quick, the moment seize
Amid the snowy Pyrenees;
More evanescent than the snow,
The pictures come, are seen, and go:
Quick, quick, currente calamo.5
I do not ask the tints that fill
The gate of day 'twixt hill and hill ”

“ To close in thy soft clime my quiet day
And rest my bones in the Mimosa's shade.
Hope! Hope! few ever cherisht thee so little;
Few are the heads thou hast so rarely raised;15
But thou didst promise this, and all was well.
For we are fond of thinking where to lie
When every pulse hath ceast, when the lone heart
Can lift no aspiration ... ”

“ Here with Albunea's home and the grove of Tiburnus beside me;
Tibur beautiful is, and musical, O Teverone,
Dashing from mountain to plain, thy parted impetuous waters!10
Tivoli's waters and rocks; and fair unto Monte Gennaro,
(Haunt even yet, I must think, as I wander and gaze, of the shadows,
Faded and pale, yet immortal, of Faunus, the Nymphs, and the Graces,)
Fair in itself, and yet fairer with human completing creations,
Folded in Sabine recesses the valley and villa of Horace.15
[Pg 65] A. H. Clough.
VALLOMBROSA
Vallombrosa! ”

“ INDEX OF FIRST LINES A wreath of light blue vapour, pure and rare, 68 Adieu, ye joys of La Valette!, 80 All along the valley, stream that flashest white, 22 Arno wins us to the fair white walls, 56 At Antwerp, there is a low wall, 112 Brook and road, 34 Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height, 21 England, we love thee better than we know, 77 Far on its rocky knoll descried, 12 Farewell, farewell! Before our prow, 99 Glion?——Ah, twenty years, it cuts, 36 Had Cain been Scot, God would have changed his doom, 121 Happy is England! ”

“ Sang to the stillness, till the mountain-shade20
Sloped downward to her seat from the upper cliff.
'O mother Ida, many-fountained Ida,
Dear mother Ida, hearken ere I die.
For now the noonday quiet holds the hill:
The grasshopper is silent in the grass:25
The lizard, with his shadow on the stone,
[Pg 21] Rests like a shadow, and the cicala sleeps.
The purple flowers droop: the golden bee
Is lily-cradled: I alone awake. ”

“ That name, a local Phantom proud to mock
The Traveller's expectation?—Could our Will5
Destroy the ideal Power within, 'twere done
Thro' what men see and touch,—slaves wandering on,
Impelled by thirst of all but Heaven-taught skill.
Full oft, our wish obtained, deeply we sigh;
Yet not unrecompensed are they who learn,10
From that depression raised, to mount on high
With stronger wing, more clearly to discern
Eternal things; and, if need be, defy
Change, with a brow not insolent, though stern.
W. Wordsworth.
ROME
AT THE PYRAMID OF CESTIUS
NEAR THE GRAVES OF SHELLEY AND KEATS ”

“ Say, hast thou tracked a traveller's round,
Nor visions met thee there,
Thou couldst but marvel to have found
This blighted world so fair?
And feel an awe within thee rise,5
That sinful man should see
Glories far worthier Seraph's eyes
Than to be shared by thee?
Store them in heart! thou shalt not faint
'Mid coming pains and fears,10
As the third heaven once nerved a Saint
For fourteen trial-years.
[Pg 77] J. H. Newman.
HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM THE SEA
Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the North-west died away ”

“ And through life's labyrinth holds fast the clue5
That education gives her, false or true.
Plants raised with tenderness are seldom strong;
Man's coltish disposition asks the thong;
And, without discipline, the favourite child,
Like a neglected forester, runs wild.10
But we, as if good qualities would grow
Spontaneous, take but little pains to sow;
We give some Latin, and a smatch of Greek;
Teach him to fence and figure twice a week;
And, having done, we think, the best we can,15
[Pg 119] Praise his proficiency, and dub him man.
From school to Cam or Isis, and thence home ”

“ Moor, Chinese, Egyptian, Russian, Roman,
Tread one common down-hill path of doom;10
Everywhere the names are Man and Woman,
Everywhere the old sad sins find room.
Evil angels tempt us in all places.
What but sands or snows hath earth to give?
Dream not, friend, of deserts and oases,15
But look inwards, and begin to live!
J. C. Mangan.
HAD CAIN BEEN SCOT
Had Cain been Scot, God would have changed his doom,—
Not forced him wander, but confined him home.
J. Cleveland.
A SONG OF THE ROAD
The gauger walked with willing foot,
And aye the gauger played the flute ”

“ Not thy Councils, not thy Kaisers, win for thee the world's regard;
[Pg 107] But thy painter, Albrecht Dürer, and Hans Sachs thy cobbler-bard.
Thus, O Nuremberg, a wanderer from a region far away,
As he paced thy streets and court-yards, sang in thought his careless lay:50
Gathering from the pavement's crevice, as a floweret of the soil,
The nobility of labour,—the long pedigree of toil.
H. W. Longfellow. ”

“ A speaking voice, a living grace,
That beckons fancy back.
Dear isles and sea-indented shore,
Till songs be no more sung,
The singers that have gone before55
[Pg 85] Will keep your lovers young:
And men will hymn your haunted skies,
And seek your holy streams,
Until the soul of music dies,
And earth has done with dreams.60
Sir Rennell Rodd. ”

“ Streets, which foot of traveller shrinks from,
As on hot plates shrinks the bear;—80
Elsewhere lawns, and vistaed gardens,
Statues white, and cool arcades,
Where at eve the German warrior
Winks upon the German maids;—
Such is Munich:—broad and stately,85
Rich of hue, and fair of form;
But, towards the end of August,
Unequivocally warm.
[Pg 103] C. S. Calverley.
NUREMBERG
In the valley of the Pegnitz, where across broad meadow-lands
Rise the blue Franconian mountains, Nuremberg, the ancient, stands. ”

“ To mutual respect in thought and deed;
To leisure, to forbearances sedate;
To social cares from jarring passions freed;
A deeper peace than that in deserts found!
W. Wordsworth.
THE BELFRY OF BRUGES
In the market-place of Bruges stands the belfry old and brown ”

“ The country's better seen when one is riding:
We'll roam where yellow Tiber speeds or lags51
At will. The aqueducts are yet bestriding
With giant march (now whole, now broken crags
With flowers plumed) the swelling and subsiding
Campagna, girt by purple hills, afar,—55
[Pg 59] That melt in light beneath the evening star.
A drive to Palestrina will be pleasant;
The wild fig grows where erst her turrets stood;
There oft, in goat-skins clad, a sunburnt peasant
Like Pan comes frisking from his ilex wood,60
And seems to wake the past time in the present. ”