New draughts of strength and youthful blood,
From this free world I've press'd;
Here nature is so mild, so good—
Who clasps me to her breast.
The billows rock our little boat,
The oars in measure beat,
The hills, while clouds around them float,
Approach our barque to meet.
Eye, mine eye, why sink'st thou mourning?
Golden dreams, are ye returning?
Though thou'rt gold, thou dream, farewell;
Here, too, life and love can dwell.
Countless stars are blinking,
In the waters here,
On the mountains drinking
Clouds of mist appear;
Round the cool bay flying,
Morning breezes wake,
Ripen'd fruits are lying
Mirror'd in the lake.
We landed in Richterswyl, where we had an introduction from Lavater to Doctor Hotze. As a physician, and a highly intelligent and benevolent man, he enjoyed great esteem in his immediate neighbourhood and in the whole country, and we can do no better honor to his memory than by referring to a passage in Lavater's Physiognomy, which describes him.
After a very hospitable entertainment, which he relieved with a highly agreeable and instructive conversation, describing to us the next halting-places in our journey, we ascended the mountains which lay before us. When we were about to descend again into the vale of Schindellegi, we turned round to take in once more the charming prospect over the lake of Zurich.
Of my feelings at that moment some idea may be gathered from the following lines, which, just as I wrote them down, are still preserved in a little memorandum book:
Dearest Lili, if I did not love thee,
I should revel in a scene like this!
Yet, sweet Lili, if I did not love thee,
What were any bliss?
This little impromptu seems to me more expressive in its present context, than as it stands by itself in the printed collection of my poems.
St. Mary's Hermitage.
The rough roads, which led to St. Mary's hermitage, did not wear out our good spirits. A number of pilgrims, whom we had remarked below upon the lake, now overtook us and asked the aid of our prayers in behalf of their pious object. We saluted them and let them pass, and as they moved regularly with their hymns and prayers, they lent a characteristic graceful animation to the dreary heights. We saw livingly marked out the serpentine path which we too had to travel, and seemed to be joyously following. The customs of the Romish church are altogether significant and imposing to the Protestant, inasmuch as he only recognises the inmost principle, by which they were first called forth, the human element by which they are propagated from race to race; thus penetrating at once to the kernel, without troubling himself, just at the moment with the shell, the rind, or even with the tree itself, its twigs, leaves, bark, and roots.
We now saw rising a dreary, treeless vale, the splendid church, the cloister, of broad and stately compass, in the midst of a neat place of sojourn for a large and varied assembly of guests.
The little church within the church, the former hermitage of the saint, incrusted with marble, and transformed as far as possible into a regular chapel, was something new to me; something that I had not seen, this little vessel, surrounded and built over with pillars and vaults. It could not but excite sober thoughts to reflect how a single spark of goodness, and of the fear of God, had here kindled a bright and burning flame, so that troops of believers, never ceased to make painful pilgrimages in order to light their little tapers at this holy fire. However the fact is to be explained, it plainly points at least to an unbounded craving in man, for equal light, for equal warmth, with that which this old hermit cherished and enjoyed in the deepest feeling and the most secure conviction. We were shewn into the treasure chamber, which was rich and imposing enough, and offered to the astonished eye busts of the size of life, not to say colossal, of the saints and founders of different orders.