“Here are the Alpine landscapes which create
      A fund for contemplation;—­to admire
      Is a brief feeling of a trivial date;
      But something worthier do such scenes inspire: 
      Here to be lonely is not desolate,
      For much I view which I could most desire,
      And, above all, a lake I can behold
    Lovelier, not dearer, than our own of old.

      “Oh that thou wert but with me!—­but I grow
      The fool of my own wishes, and forget
      The solitude which I have vaunted so
      Has lost its praise in this but one regret;
      There may be others which I less may show;—­
      I am not of the plaintive mood, and yet
      I feel an ebb in my philosophy,
    And the tide rising in my alter’d eye.

      “I did remind thee of our own dear lake[126],
      By the old hall which may be mine no more. 
      Leman’s is fair; but think not I forsake
      The sweet remembrance of a dearer shore: 
      Sad havoc Time must with my memory make
      Ere that or thou can fade these eyes before;
      Though, like all things which I have loved, they are
    Resign’d for ever, or divided far.

      “The world is all before me; I but ask
      Of nature that with which she will comply—­
      It is but in her summer’s sun to bask,
      To mingle with the quiet of her sky,
      To see her gentle face without a mask,
      And never gaze on it with apathy. 
      She was my early friend, and now shall be
    My sister—­till I look again on thee.

      “I can reduce all feelings but this one;
      And that I would not;—­for at length I see
      Such scenes as those wherein my life begun. 
      The earliest—­even the only paths for me—­
      Had I but sooner learnt the crowd to shun,
      I had been better than I now can be;
      The passions which have torn me would have slept;
    I had not suffer’d, and thou hadst not wept.

      “With false ambition what had I to do? 
      Little with love, and least of all with fame;
      And yet they came unsought, and with me grew,
      And made me all which they can make—­a name. 
      Yet this was not the end I did pursue;
      Surely I once beheld a nobler aim. 
      But all is over—­I am one the more
    To baffled millions which have gone before.

      “And for the future, this world’s future may
      From me demand but little of my care;
      I have outlived myself by many a day;
      Having survived so many things that were;
      My years have been no slumber, but the prey
      Of ceaseless vigils; for I had the share
      Of life which might have fill’d a century,
    Before its fourth in time had pass’d me by.