must certainly interest, in reminding you of moments to which you can hardly look back without a pleasure not the less dear from a shade of melancholy. You will meet with few images without recollecting the spot where we observed them together; consequently, whatever is feeble in my design, or spiritless in my colouring, will be amply supplied by your own

memory.

With still greater propriety I might have inscribed to you a description of some of the features of your native mountains, through which we have wandered together, in the same manner, with so much pleasure. But the seasunsets, which give such splendour to the vale of Clwyd, Snowdon, the chair of Idris, the quiet village of Bethgelert, Menai and her Druids, the Alpine steeps of the Conway, and the still more interesting windings of the wizard stream of the Dee, remain yet untouched. Apprehensive that my pencil may never be exercised on these subjects, I cannot let slip this opportunity of thus publicly assuring you with how much affection and esteem

I am, dear Sir,

Most sincerely yours,

London, 1793

W. WORDSWORTH.

Happiness (if she had been to be found on
earth) among the charms of Nature-Plea-
sures of the pedestrian Traveller-Author
crosses France to the Alps-Present state of
the Grande Chartreuse-Lake of Como-
Time, Sunset-Same Scene, Twilight-Same
Scene, Morning; its voluptuous Character;
Old man and forest-cottage music-River
Tusa-Via Mala and Grison Gipsy-Sckel-
lenen-thal-Lake of Uri-Stormy sunset-
Chapel of William Tell-Force of local emo-
tion-
-Chamois-chaser-View of the higher
Alps--manner of life of a Swiss mountaineer,
interspersed with views of the higher Alps-
Golden age of the Alps-Life and views con-
tinued-Ranz des Vaches, famous Swiss Air
-Abbey of Einsiedlen and its pilgrims
Valley of Chamouny-Mont Blanc-Slavery
of Savoy-Influence of liberty on cottage-
happiness-France-Wish for the Extirpa-
tion of Slavery-Conclusion.

WERE there, below, a spot of holy ground
Where from distress a refuge might be found,
And solitude prepare the soul for heaven;
Sure, nature's God that spot to man had given
Where falls the purple morning far and wide
In flakes of light upon the mountain side;
Where with loud voice the power of water
shakes

The leafy wood, or sleeps in quiet lakes.

Yet not unrecompensed the man shall roam,
Who at the call of summer quits his home,
And plods through some wide realm o'er vale
and height,

Though seeking only holiday delight;
At least, not owning to himself an aim

To which the sage would give a prouder name.
No gains too cheaply earned his fancy cloy,
Though every passing zephyr whispers joy;

Brisk toil, alternating with ready ease,
Feeds the clear current of his sympathies.
For him sod-seats the cottage-door adorn;
And peeps the far-off spire, his evening bourn!
Dear is the forest frowning o'er his head,
And dear the velvet green-sward to his tread:
Moves there a cloud o'er mid-day's flaming eye?
Upward he looks-and calls it luxury:'
Kind Nature's charities his steps attend;
In every babbling brook he finds a friend;
While chastening thoughts of sweetest use,
bestowed
By wisdom, moralise his pensive road.
Host of his welcome inn, the noon-tide bower,
To his spare meal he calls the passing poor;
He views the sun uplift his golden fire,
Or sink, with heart alive like Memnon's lyre;
Blesses the moon that comes with kindly ray,
To light him shaken by his rugged way.
Back from his sight no bashful children steal;
He sits a brother at the cottage-meal;
His humble looks no shy restraint impart ;
Around him plays at will the virgin heart.
While unsuspended wheels the village dance,
The maidens eye him with enquiring glance,
Much wondering by what fit of crazing care,
Or desperate love, bewildered, he came there.
A hope, that prudence could not then

approve,

That clung to Nature with a truant's love,
O'er Gallia's wastes of corn my footsteps led;
Her files of road-elms, high above my head
In long-drawn vista, rustling in the breeze;
Or where her pathways straggle as they please
By lonely farms and secret villages.
But lo! the Alps, ascending white in air,
Toy with the sun and glitter from afar.

And now, emerging from the forest's gloom, I greet thee, Chartreuse, while I mourn thy doom.

Whither is fled that Power whose frown severe
Awed sober Reason till she crouched in fear?
Chains that were loosened only by the sound
That Silence, once in deathlike fetters bound,
Of holy rites chanted in measured round?
The cloister startles at the gleam of arms.
-The voice of blasphemy the fane alarms,
The thundering tube the aged angler hears,
Bent o'er the groaning flood that sweeps away

his tears. Cloud-piercing pine-trees nod their troubled heads,

Spires, rocks, and lawns a browner night o'erspreads;

Strong terror checks the female peasant's sighs,
And start the astonished shades at female eyes.
From Bruno's forest screams the affrighted jay,
And slow the insulted eagle wheels away.
A viewless flight of laughing Demons mock
The Cross, by angels planted* on the aerial

rock.

Only the waning moon hangs dull and red
Above a melancholy mountain's head,
Then sets. In total gloom the Vagrant sighs,
Stoops her sick head, and shuts her weary

eyes;

Or on her fingers counts the distant clock,
Or, to the drowsy crow of midnight cock,
Listens, or quakes while from the forest's gulf
Howls near and nearer yet the famished wolf.

From the green vale of Urseren smooth and

wide

Descend we now, the maddened Reuss our guide;
By rocks that, shutting out the blessed day,
Cling tremblingly to rocks as loose as they;
By cells upon whose image, while he prays,
The kneeling peasant scarcely dares to gaze;
By many a votive death-cross planted near,
And watered duly with the pious tear,
That faded silent from the upward eye
Unmoved with each rude form of peril nigh;
Fixed on the anchor left by Him who saves
Alike in whelming snows, and roaring waves.

But soon a peopled region on the sight
Opens-a little world of calm delight;
Where mists, suspended on the expiring gale,
Spread roof-like o'er the deep secluded vale,
And beams of evening slipping in between,
Gently illuminate a sober scene:-
Here, on the brown wood-cottages they sleep,
There, over rock or sloping pasture creep.
On as we journey, in clear view displayed,
The still vale lengthens underneath its shade
Of low-hung vapour: on the freshened mead
The green light sparkles;-the dim bowers

recede.

While pastoral pipes and streams the landscape full,

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 gleamy
showers.

From such romantic dreams, my soul, awake!
To sterner pleasure, where, by Uri's lake
In Nature's pristine majesty outspread,
Winds neither road nor path for foot to tread :
The rocks rise naked as a wall, or stretch
Far o'er the water, hung with groves of beech;
Aerial pines from loftier steeps ascend,
Nor stop but where creation seems to end.
Yet here and there, if 'mid the savage scene
Appears a scanty plot of smiling green,
Up from the lake a zigzag path will creep
To reach a small wood-hut hung boldly on the
steep.

--Before those thresholds (never can they know
The face of traveller passing to and fro,)
No peasant leans upon his pole, to tell
For whom at morning tolled the funeral bell;
Their watch-dog ne'er his angry bark foregoes,
Touched by the beggar's moan of human woes;
The shady porch ne'er offered a cool seat
To pilgrims overcome by summer's heat.
Yet thither the world's business finds its way
At times, and tales unsought beguile the day,
And there are those fond thoughts which
Solitude,

However stern, is powerless to exclude.

There doth the maiden watch her lover's sail
Approaching, and upbraid the tardy gale;
At midnight listens till his parting oar,
And its last echo, can be heard no more.

And what if ospreys, cormorants, herons cry,
Amid tempestuous vapours driving by,
Or hovering over wastes too bleak to rear
That common growth of earth, the foodful ear;
Where the green apple shrivels on the spray,
And pines the unripened pear in summer's

kindliest ray;

With Independence, child of high Disdain.
Exulting 'mid the winter of the skies,

Contentment shares the desolate domain

Shy as the jealous chamois, Freedom flies,
And grasps by fits her sword, and often eyes;
And sometimes, as from rock to rock she bounds,
The Patriot nymph starts at imagined sounds,
And, wildly pausing, oft she hangs aghast,
Whether some old Swiss air hath checked her
haste

Or thrill of Spartan fife is caught between the blast.

Swoln with incessant rains from hour to hour,
All day the deepening floods a murmur pour:
The sky is veiled, and every cheerful sight:
Dark is the region as with coming night;
But what a sudden burst of overpowering light!
Triumphant on the bosom of the storm,
Glances the wheeling eagle's glorious form!
Eastward, in long perspective glittering, shine
The wood-crowned cliffs that o'er the lake
recline;

At once to pillars turned that flame with gold:
Those lofty cliffs a hundred streams unfold,
The west, that burns like one dilated sun,
Behind his sail the peasant shrinks, to shun
A crucible of mighty compass, felt
By mountains, glowing till they seem to melt.

But, lo! the boatman, overawed, before
The pictured fane of Tell suspends his oar;
Confused the Marathonian tale appears,
While his eyes sparkle with heroic tears.
And who, that walks where men of ancient days
Have wrought with godlike arm the deeds of
praise

Feels not the spirit of the place control,
Or rouse and agitate his labouring soul?
Say, who, by thinking on Canadian hills,
Or wild Aosta lulled by Alpine rills,

On Zutphen's plain, or on that highland dell,
Through which rough Garry cleaves his way,

can tell

What high resolves exalt the tenderest thought
Of him whom passion rivets to the spot,
Where breathed the gale that caught Wolfe's
happiest sigh,

And the last sunbeam fell on Bayard's eye;
Where bleeding Sidney from the cup retired,
And glad Dundee in "faint huzzas "expired?

But now with other mind I stand alone Upon the summit of this naked cone, And watch the fearless chamois-hunter chase His prey, through tracts abrupt of desolate space,

Through vacant worlds where Nature never

Thro' worlds where Life, and Voice, and Motion sleep;

Where silent Hours their death-like sway

extend,

Save when the avalanche breaks loose, to rend
Its way with uproar, till the ruin, drowned
In some dense wood or gulf of snow profound,
Mocks the dull ear of Time with deaf abortive
sound.

-"Tis his, while wandering on from height to height,

To see a planet's pomp and steady light
In the least star of scarce-appearing night;
While the pale moon moves near him, on the
bound

Of ether, shining with diminished round,
And far and wide the icy summits blaze,
Rejoicing in the glory of her rays:
To him the day-star glitters small and bright,
Shorn of its beams, insufferably white,
And he can look beyond the sun, and view
Those fast-receding depths of sable blue
Flying till vision can no more pursue!
-At once bewildering mists around him close,
And cold and hunger are his least of woes;
The Demon of the snow, with angry roar
Descending, shuts for aye his prison door.
Soon with despair's whole weight his spirits sink;
Bread has he none, the snow must be his drink:
And, ere his eyes can close upon the day,
The eagle of the Alps o'ershades her prey.

Now couch thyself where, heard with fear afar,

Thunders through echoing pines the headlong
Aar;

Or rather stay to taste the mild delights
Of pensive Underwalden's pastoral heights.
-Is there who 'mid these awful wilds has seen
The native Genii walk the mountain green?
Or heard, while other worlds their charms
reveal,

Soft music o'er the aërial summit steal?
While o'er the desert, answering every close,
Rich steam of sweetest perfume comes and

goes.

-And sure there is a secret Power that reigns
Here, where no trace of man the spot profanes,
Nought but the chalets, flat and bare, on high
Suspended 'mid the quiet of the sky;

Or distant herds that pasturing upward creep,
And, not untended, climb the dangerous steep.
How still! no irreligious sound or sight
Rouses the soul from her severe delight.
An idle voice the sabbath region fills
Of Deep that calls to Deep across the hills,
And with that voice accords the soothing sound
Of drowsy bells, for ever tinkling round;
Faint wail of eagle melting into blue
Beneath the cliffs, and pine-wood's steady
sugh;

The solitary heifer's deepened low;

Or rumbling, heard remote, of falling snow. All motions, sounds, and voices, far and nigh, Blend in a music of tranquillity;

Save when, a stranger seen below, the boy Shouts from the echoing hills with savage joy.

*Sugh, a Scotch word expressive of the sound of the wind through the trees.

When, from the sunny breast of open seas, And bays with myrtle fringed, the southern breeze

Comes on to gladden April with the sight
Of green isles widening on each snow-clad
height;

When shouts and lowing herds the valley fill,
And louder torrents stun the noon-tide hill,
The pastoral Swiss begin the cliffs to scale,
Leaving to silence the deserted vale;
And like the Patriarchs in their simple age
Move, as the verdure leads, from stage to stage;
High and more high in summer's heat they go,
And hear the rattling thunder far below;
Or steal beneath the mountains, half-deterred,
Where huge rocks tremble to the bellowing
herd.

One I behold who, 'cross the foaming flood, Leaps with a bound of graceful hardihood; Another high on that green ledge; he gained The tempting spot with every sinew strained; And downward thence a knot of grass he throws,

Food for his beasts in time of winter snows.
-Far different life from what Tradition hoar
Transmits of happier lot in times of yore!
From out the rocks, the wild bees' safe abode:
Then Summer lingered long; and honey flowed
Continual waters welling cheered the waste,
And plants were wholesome, now of deadly

taste:

Nor Winter yet his frozen stores had piled, Usurping where the fairest herbage smiled: Nor Hunger driven the herds from pastures bare,

To climb the treacherous cliffs for scanty fare. Then the milk-thistle flourished through the land,

And forced the full-swoln udder to demand,
Thrice every day, the pail and welcome hand.
Thus does the father to his children tell
Of banished bliss, by fancy loved too well.
Alas! that human guilt provoked the rod
Of angry Nature to avenge her God.
Still, Nature, ever just, to him imparts
Joys only given to uncorrupted hearts.

'Tis morn with gold the verdant mountain glows;

More high, the snowy peaks with hues of rose.
Far-stretched beneath the many-tinted hills,
A mighty waste of mist the valley fills,
A solemn sea! whose billows wide around
Stand motionless, to awful silence bound:
Pines, on the coast, through mist their tops
uprear,

That like to leaning masts of stranded ships

appear.

A single chasm, a gulf of gloomy blue,
Gapes in the centre of the sea-and through
That dark mysterious gulf ascending, sound
Innumerable streams with roar profound.
Mount through the nearer vapours notes of
birds,

And merry flageolet; the low of herds,
The bark of dogs, the heifer's tinkling bell,
Talk, laughter, and perchance a church-tower

knell :

Think not, the peasant from aloft has gazed And heard with heart unmoved, with soul unraised;

Nor is his spirit less enrapt, nor less
Alive to independent happiness,
Then, when he lies, out-stretched, at even-tide
Upon the fragrant mountain's purple side:
For as the pleasures of his simple day
Beyond his native valley seldom stray,
Nought round its darling precincts can he find
But brings some past enjoyment to his mind;
While Hope, reclining upon Pleasure's urn,
Binds her wild wreaths, and whispers his

return.

Once, Man entirely free, alone and wild, Was blest as free-for he was Nature's child. He all superior but his God disdained, Walked none restraining, and by none

restrained:

Confessed no law but what his reason taught, Did all he wished, and wished but what he ought.

As man in his primeval dower arrayed
The image of his glorious Sire displayed,
Even so, by faithful Nature guarded, here
The traces of primeval Man appear;
The simple dignity no forms debase;
The eye sublime, and surly lion-grace:
The slave of none, of beasts alone the lord,
His book he prizes, nor neglects his sword,
-Well taught by that to feel his rights,
prepared

With this "the blessings he enjoys to guard."

And, as his native hills encircle ground For many a marvellous victory renowned, The work of Freedom daring to oppose, With few in arms, innumerable foes, When to those famous fields his steps are led, An unknown power connects him with the dead: For images of other worlds are there; Awful the light, and holy is the air. Fitfully, and in flashes, through his soul, Like sun-lit tempests, troubled transports roll; His bosom heaves, his Spirit towers amain, Beyond the senses and their little reign.

And oft, when that dread vision hath past by, He holds with God himself communion high, There where the peal of swelling torrents fills The sky-roofed temple of the eternal hills; Or, when upon the mountain's silent brow Reclined, he sees, above him and below, Bright stars of ice and azure fields of snow; While needle peaks of granite shooting bare Tremble in ever-varying tints of air. And when a gathering weight of shadows brown

Falls on the valleys as the sun goes down; And Pikes, of darkness named and fear and storms,*

Uplift in quiet their illumined forms,
In sea-like reach of prospect round him spread,
Tinged like an angel's smile all rosy red-
Awe in his breast with holiest love unites,
And the near heavens impart their own de-
lights.

When downward to his winter hut he goes,
Dear and more dear the lessening circle grows;
That hut which on the hills so oft employs
His thoughts, the central point of all his joys.

*As Schreck-Horn, the pike of terror; Wetter-Horn, the pike of storms, &c. &c.

And as a swallow, at the hour of rest,
Peeps often ere she darts into her nest,
So to the homestead, where the grandsire tends
A little prattling child, he oft descends,
To glance a look upon the well-matched pair;
Till storm and driving ice blockade him there.
There, safely guarded by the woods behind,
He hears the chiding of the baffled wind,
Hears Winter calling all his terrors round,
And, blest within himself, he shrinks not from
the sound.

Through Nature's vale his homely pleasures glide,

Unstained by envy, discontent, and pride;
The bound of all his vanity, to deck,

With one bright bell, a favourite heifer's neck;
Well pleased upon some simple annual feast,
Remembered half the year and hoped the rest,
If dairy-produce, from his inner hoard,
Of thrice ten summers dignify the board.
-Alas! in every clime a flying ray

Is all we have to cheer our wintry way;
And here the unwilling mind may more than
trace

The general sorrows of the human race:
The churlish gales of penury, that blow
Cold as the north-wind o'er a waste of snow,
To them the gentle groups of bliss deny
That on the noon-day bank of leisure lie.
Yet more ;-compelled by Powers which only
deign

That solitary man disturb their reign,
Powers that support an unremitting strife
With all the tender charities of life,

Full oft the father, when his sons have grown
To manhood, seems their title to disown;
And from his nest amid the storms of heaven
Drives, eagle-like, those sons as he was driven;
With stern composure watches to the plain-
And never, eagle-like, beholds again!

When long-familiar joys are all resigned,
Why does their sad remembrance haunt the
mind?
Lo! where through flat Batavia's willowy

groves,

Or by the lazy Seine, the exile roves;

O'er the curled waters Alpine measures swell, And search the affections to their inmost cell; Sweet poison spreads along the listener's veins, Turning past pleasures into mortal pains; Poison, which not a frame of steel can brave, Bows his young head with sorrow to the grave.

Gay lark of hope, thy silent song resume! Ye flattering eastern lights, once more the hills illume!

Fresh gales and dews of life's delicious morn,
And thou, lost fragrance of the heart, return!
Alas! the little joy to man allowed.
Fades like the lustre of an evening cloud;
Or like the beauty in a flower installed,
Whose season was, and cannot be recalled.
Yet, when opprest by sickness, grief, or care,
And taught that pain is pleasure's natural heir,
Death would be else the favourite friend of
We still confide in more than we can know;

woe.

'Mid savage rocks, and seas of snow that shine,

Between interminable tracts of pine,