Surgite verni,
Surgite flores,
Germina pictis
Surgite campis!
Teneris mistæ
Violis rosæ;
Candida sparsis
Lilla calthis!
Currite plenis
Carmina venis,
Fundite lætum
Barbita metrum;
Namque revixit
Sicuti dixit
Pius illæsus
Funere Jesus.
Plaudite montes,
Ludite fontes,
Resonent valles,
Repetant colles!
Io revixit.
Sicuti dixit
Pius illæsus
Funere Jesus[9]
And when I ceased, the mountain stream which dashed over the rocks beside me, the whispering grasses, the trembling wild-flowers, the rustling forests, the lake with its ripples, the green hills and solemn snow-mountains beyond—all seemed to take up the chorus.
There is a wonderful, invigorating influence about Ulrich Zwingle, with whom I have spent many days lately. It seems as if the fresh air of the mountains among which he passed his youth were always around him. In his presence it is impossible to despond. While Luther remains immovably holding every step of ground he has taken, Zwingle presses on, and surprises the enemy asleep in his strongholds. Luther carries on the war like the Landsknechts, our own firm and impenetrable infantry; Zwingle, like his own impetuous mountaineers, sweeps down from the heights upon the foe.
In Switzerland I and my books have met with more sudden and violent varieties of reception than anywhere else; the people are so free and unrestrained. In some villages, the chief men, or the priest himself, summoned all the inhabitants by the church bell, to hear all I had to tell about Dr. Luther and his work, and to buy his books; my stay was one constant fête, and the warm-hearted peasants accompanied me miles on my way, discoursing of Zwingle and Luther, the broken yoke of Rome, and the glorious days of freedom that were coming. The names of Luther and Zwingle were on every lip, like those of Tell and Winkelried and the heroes of the old struggle of Swiss liberation.
In other villages, on the contrary, the peasants gathered angrily around me, reviled me as a spy and an intruding foreigner, and drove me with stones and rough jests from among them, threatening that I should not escape so easily another time.
In some places they have advanced much further than among us in Germany. The images have been removed from the churches, and the service is read in the language of the people.
But the great joy is to see that the light has not been spread only from torch to torch, as human illumination spread, but has burst at once on Germany, France, and Switzerland, as heavenly light dawns from above. It is this which makes it not an illumination merely, but morning and spring! Lefevre in France and Zwingle in Switzerland both passed through their period of storms and darkness, and both, awakened by the heavenly light to the new world, found that it was no solitude—that others also were awake, and that the day's work had begun, as it should, with matin songs.
Now I am tending northwards once more. I intend to renew my stores at my father's press at Wittemberg. My heart yearns also for news of all dear to me there. Perhaps, too, I may yet see Dr. Luther, and find scope for preaching the evangelical doctrine among my own people.