But journeying home, how rapt his spirits rose!
How light his footsteps crushed St. Gothard’s snows!
How dear seemed e’en the waste and wild Shreckhorn,
Though wrapt in clouds, and frowning as in scorn
Upon a downward world of pastoral charms;
Where, by the very smell of dairy-farms,
And fragrance from the mountain-herbage blown,
Blindfold his native hills he could have known![66]
“His coming down yon lake,—his boat in view
Of windows where love’s fluttering kerchief flew,—