Away the dreams that but deceive!
And thou, sad Guide, adieu!30
I go; Fate drives me: but I leave
Half of my life with you.
II
Glion?——Ah, twenty years, it cuts
All meaning from a name!
White houses prank where once were huts!
Glion, but not the same,
And yet I know not. All unchanged5
The turf, the pines, the sky!
The hills in their old order ranged.
The lake, with Chillon by!
And 'neath those chestnut-trees, where stiff
And stony mounts the way,10
Their crackling husk-heaps burn, as if
I left them yesterday.
Across the valley, on that slope,
The huts of Avant shine—
Its pines under their branches ope15
Ways for the tinkling kine.
Full-foaming milk-pails, Alpine fare,
Sweet heaps of fresh-cut grass,
Invite to rest the traveller there
Before he climb the pass—20
The gentian-flowered pass, its crown
With yellow spires aflame,
Whence drops the path to Allière down
And walls where Byron came.
Still in my soul the voice I heard25
Of Obermann—away
I turned; by some vague impulse stirred,
Along the rocks of Naye
And Sonchaud's piny flanks I gaze
And the blanched summit bare30
Of Malatrait, to where in haze
The Valais opens fair,