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WAS IT a dream? We sail’d, I thought we sail’d, Martin and I, down a green Alpine stream, Under o’erhanging pines; the morning sun, On the wet umbrage of their glossy tops, On the red pinings of their forest floor, Drew a warm scent abroad; behind the pines The mountain skirts, with all their sylvan change Of bright-leaf’d chestnuts, and moss’d walnut-trees, And the frail scarlet-berried ash, began. Swiss chalets glitter’d on the dewy slopes, And from some swarded shelf high up, there came Notes of wild pastoral music: over all Rang’d, diamond-bright, the eternal wall of snow. Upon the mossy rocks at the stream’s edge. Back’d by the pines, a plank-built cottage stood, Bright in the sun; the climbing gourd-plant’s leaves Muffled its walls, and on the stone-strewn roof Lay the warm golden gourds; golden, within, Under the eaves, peer’d rows of Indian corn. We shot beneath the cottage with the stream. On the brown rude-carv’d balcony two Forms Came forth—Olivia’s, Marguerite! and thine. Clad were they both in white, flowers in their breast; Straw hats bedeck’d their heads, with ribbons blue Which wav’d, and on their shoulders fluttering play’d. They saw us, they conferr’d; their bosoms heav’d, And more than mortal impulse fill’d their eyes. Their lips mov’d; their white arms, wav’d eagerly, Flash’d once, like falling streams:—we rose, we gaz’d One moment, on the rapid’s top, our boat Hung pois’d—and then the darting River of Life, Loud thundering, bore us by: swift, swift it foam’d; Black under cliffs it rac’d, round headlands shone. Soon the plank’d cottage ’mid the sun-warm’d pines Faded, the moss, the rocks; us burning Plains Bristled with cities, us the Sea receiv’d. |