—­Now with joy’s tearful kiss each other greet,
  Nor longer naked be your way-worn feet,
  For ye have reach’d at last that happy shore,
  Where the charm’d worm of pain shall gnaw no more. 
  How gayly murmur and how sweetly taste 670
  The [Cc] fountains rear’d for you amid the waste! 
  Yes I will see you when ye first behold
  Those turrets tipp’d by hope with morning gold,
  And watch, while on your brows the cross ye make,
  Round your pale eyes a wintry lustre wake. 675
 —­Without one hope her written griefs to blot,
  Save in the land where all things are forgot,
  My heart, alive to transports long unknown,
  Half wishes your delusion were it’s own.

  Last let us turn to where Chamouny [Dd] shields, 680
  Bosom’d in gloomy woods, her golden fields,
  Five streams of ice amid her cots descend,
  And with wild flowers and blooming orchards blend,
  A scene more fair than what the Grecian feigns
  Of purple lights and ever vernal plains. 685
  Here lawns and shades by breezy rivulets fann’d,
  Here all the Seasons revel hand in hand,
 —­Red stream the cottage lights; the landscape fades,
  Erroneous wavering mid the twilight shades. 
  Alone ascends that mountain nam’d of white, [Ee] 690
  That dallies with the Sun the summer night. 
  Six thousand years amid his lonely bounds
  The voice of Ruin, day and night, resounds. 
  Where Horror-led his sea of ice assails,
  Havoc and Chaos blast a thousand vales, 695
  In waves, like two enormous serpents, wind
  And drag their length of deluge train behind. 
  Between the pines enormous boughs descry’d
  Serene he towers, in deepest purple dy’d;
  Glad Day-light laughs upon his top of snow, 700
  Glitter the stars above, and all is black below.

  At such an hour I heav’d the human sigh,
  When roar’d the sullen Arve in anger by,
  That not for thee, delicious vale! unfold
  Thy reddening orchards, and thy fields of gold; 705
  That thou, the [Ff] slave of slaves, art doom’d to pine,
  While no Italian arts their charms combine
  To teach the skirt of thy dark cloud to shine;
  For thy poor babes that, hurrying from the door,
  With pale-blue hands, and eyes that fix’d implore, 710
  Dead muttering lips, and hair of hungry white,
  Besiege the traveller whom they half affright. 
 —­Yes, were it mine, the cottage meal to share
  Forc’d from my native mountains bleak and bare;
  O’er [Gg] Anet’s hopeless seas of marsh to stray, 715
  Her shrill winds roaring round my lonely way;
  To scent the sweets of Piedmont’s breathing rose,
  And orange gale that o’er Lugano blows;
  In the wide range of many a weary round,