The same subject has been treated by the late lamented Thomas Hood in a poem under a similar title.—Vide Poems, vol. i. p. 48. It is worth referring to, if for nothing else than observing how it has been dealt with by two ingenious and original minds. Mrs Hemans’s lyric was first published.]
THE SHEPHERD-POET OF THE ALPS.
“God gave him reverence of laws,
Yet stirring blood in freedom’s cause—
A spirit to his rocks akin,
The eye of the hawk, and the fire therein!” Coleridge.
Singing of the free blue sky,
And the wild-flower glens that lie
Far amidst the ancient hills,
Which the fountain-music fills;