Who thro' the day pursued this pleasant path

That winds beside the mirror of all beauty,

And, when at length he heard his fellow-pilgrims
Discoursing of the lake, asked where it was.

They marvelled, as they might; and so must all,
Seeing what now I saw; for now 'twas day,

And the bright Sun was in the firmament,

A thousand shadows of a thousand hues

Chequering the clear expanse. Awhile his Orb

Hung o'er thy trackless fields of snow, Mont Blanc,

Thy seas of ice and ice-built promontories,

That change their shapes for ever as in sport;

Then travelled onward and went down behind

The pine-clad heights of Jura, lighting up

The woodman's casement, and perchance his axe

Borne homeward thro' the forest in his hand;

And, in some deep and melancholy glen,

That dungeon-fortress never to be named,

Where, like a lion taken in the toils,

Toussaint breathed out his brave and generous spirit.

Ah, little did He think, who sent him there,

That ships have gone and sought it, and returned,

Saying it was not!

Still along the shore,

Among the trees I went for many a mile,

Where damsels sit and weave their fishing-nets,

Singing some national song by the way-side.

But now 'twas dusk; and, journeying by the Rhone, That there came down, a torrent from the Alps,

I entered where a key unlocks a kingdom,

The mountains closing, and the road, the river
Filling the narrow passage. There I slept.

II.

THE GREAT ST. BERNARD.

NIGHT was again descending, when my mule,

That all day long had climbed among the clouds, Stopped, to our mutual joy, at that low door

So near the summit of the Great St. Bernard;

That door which ever on its hinges moved

To them that knocked, and nightly sends abroad

Ministering spirits. Lying on the watch,

Two dogs of grave demeanour welcomed me ';