Lo, high among mountains a meadow lies spread,
And there we alight, and get ready our bed;
There hatch we our eggs, and beneath the chill pole
We wait while the summer months over us roll.
No hunter, desirous to make us his prey,
Invades our lone valley by night or by day;
But green-mantled fairies their merry routs hold,
And fearless the pigmy [34] there hammers its gold.
But when pallid winter, again on the rocks
Shakes down in a shower the snow from his locks,
Then comes the desire for heat, in full force,
And Southward our phalanx bends swiftly its course.
To the verdant Savannah, and palm-shaded plain,
Where the Nile rolls his water, we hurry again;
There rest we till summer’s sun, waxing too hot,
Makes us wish for our native, our hill-girded spot.
THE BROKEN HARP.
O thou, who, ’mid the forest trees,
With thy harmonious trembling strain,
Could’st change at once to soothing ease,
My love-sick bosom’s cruel pain:
Thou droop’st in dreary silence now,
With shiver’d frame, and broken string,
While here, unhelp’d, beneath the bough
I sit, and feebly strive to sing.
The moon no more illumes the ground;
In night and vapour dies my lay;
For with thy sweet and melting sound
Fled, all at once, her silver ray:
O soon, O soon, shall this sad heart,
Which beats so low, and bleeds so free,
O’ercome by its fell load of smart,
Be broke, O ruin’d harp, like thee!
SCENES.
Observe ye not yon high cliff’s brow,
Up which a wanderer clambers slow,
’T is by a hoary ruin crown’d,
Which rocks when shrill winds whistle round;
That is an ancient knightly hold,—
Alas! it droops, deserted, cold;
And sad and cheerless seems to gaze,
Back, back, to yon heroic days,
When youthful Kemps, [35] completely arm’d,
And lovely maids around it swarm’d.
You, in the tower, a hole may see;
A window there has ceas’d to be.
From that once lean’d a damsel bright,
In evening’s red and fading light,
And star’d intently down the way,
Up which should come her lover gay:
But, time it flies on rapid wing—
Far off a church is towering,
Within it stand two marble stones,
That rest above the lovers’ bones.
But see, the wanderer, with pain,
Has reach’d the pile he wish’d to gain;
Whilst Sol, behind the ruin’d walls,
Down into sacred nature falls.