I live not in myself, but I become
  Portion of that around me, and to me
  High mountains are a feeling, but the hum
  Of human cities torture; I can see
  Nothing to loathe in Nature save to be
  A link reluctant in a fleshly chain,
  Class’d among creatures, when the soul can flee,
  And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain
  Of ocean, or the stars, mingle, and not in vain.

  Are not the mountains, waves, and skies a part
  Of me and of my soul, as I of them? 
  Is not the love of these deep in my heart
  With a pure passion?  Should I not contemn
  All objects, if compared with these?

Love of Nature was a passion with him, and when he looked

  Upon the peopled desert past
  As on a place of agony and strife,

mountains gave him a sense of freedom.

He praised the Rhine: 

  Where Nature, nor too sombre nor too gay,
  Wild but not rude, awful yet not austere,
  Is to the mellow earth as autumn to the year.

and far more the Alps: 

      Above me are the Alps,
  The palaces of Nature, whose vast walls
  Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps,
  And throned eternity in icy halls
  Of cold sublimity, where forms and falls
  The avalanche, the thunderbolt of snow! 
  All that expands the spirit, yet appals,
  Gather around these summits, as to shew
  How Earth may pierce to Heaven, yet leave vain man below.

On the Lake of Geneva: 

  Ye stars which are the poetry of heaven... 
  All heaven and earth are still—­though not in sleep,
  But breathless, as we grow when feeling most;
  And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep. 
  All heaven and earth are still:  from the high host
  Of stars, to the lull’d lake and mountain coast,
  All is concenter’d in a life intense,
  Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost,
  But hath a part of being, and a sense
  Of that which is of all Creator and defence.

  And this is in the night.  Most glorious night,
  Thou wert not sent for slumber; let me be
  A sharer in thy fierce and far delight,
  A portion of the tempest and of thee! 
  How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea,
  And the big rain comes dancing to the earth! 
  And now again ’tis black—­and now, the glee
  Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain mirth,
  As if they did rejoice o’er a young earthquake’s birth. 
  But where of ye, oh tempests, is the goal? 
  Are ye like those within the human breast? 
  Or do ye find, at length, like eagles, some high nest?

  The morn is up again, the dewy morn
  With breath all incense, and with cheek all bloom,
  Laughing the clouds away with playful scorn,
  And living as if earth contained no tomb.

In Clarens: