On a rude viol touched with withered hand. [42]
  As lambs or fawns in April clustering lie [43]
  Under a hoary oak’s thin canopy, 150
  Stretched at his feet, with stedfast upward eye,
  His children’s children listened to the sound; [44]
 —­A Hermit with his family around!

    But let us hence; for fair Locarno smiles
  Embowered in walnut slopes and citron isles:  155
  Or seek at eve the banks of Tusa’s stream,
  Where, [45] ’mid dim towers and woods, her [M] waters gleam. 
  From the bright wave, in solemn gloom, retire
  The dull-red steeps, and, darkening still, aspire
  To where afar rich orange lustres glow 160
  Round undistinguished clouds, and rocks, and snow: 
  Or, led where Via Mala’s chasms confine
  The indignant waters of the infant Rhine,
  Hang o’er the abyss, whose else impervious gloom [46]
  His burning eyes with fearful light illume. 165

    The mind condemned, without reprieve, to go
  O’er life’s long deserts with its charge of woe,
  With sad congratulation joins the train
  Where beasts and men together o’er the plain
  Move on—­a mighty caravan of pain:  170
  Hope, strength, and courage, social suffering brings,
  Freshening the wilderness with shades and springs. 
 —­There be whose lot far otherwise is cast: 
  Sole human tenant of the piny waste, [47]
  By choice or doom a gipsy wanders here, 175
  A nursling babe her only comforter;
  Lo, where she sits beneath yon shaggy rock,
  A cowering shape half hid in curling smoke! [48]

    When lightning among clouds and mountain-snows
  Predominates, and darkness comes and goes, 180
  And the fierce torrent, at the flashes broad
  Starts, like a horse, beside the glaring road—­
  She seeks a covert from the battering shower
  In the roofed bridge [N]; the bridge, in that dread hour,
  Itself all trembling at the torrent’s power. [49] 185

    Nor is she more at ease on some still night,
  When not a star supplies the comfort of its light;
  Only the waning moon hangs dull and red
  Above a melancholy mountain’s head,
  Then sets.  In total gloom the Vagrant sighs, 190
  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. [50] 195

    From the green vale of Urseren smooth and wide
  Descend we now, the maddened Reuss our guide; [51]
  By rocks that, shutting out the blessed day,
  Cling tremblingly to rocks as loose as they;
  By cells [P] upon whose image, while he