Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends; Where rolled the ocean, thereon was his home; Where a blue sky and glowing clime extends, He had the passion and the power to roam; The desert, forest, cavern, breaker's foam, Were unto him companionship; they spake A mutual language, clearer than the tome Of his land's tongue, which he would oft forsake For Nature's pages glass'd by sunbeams on the lake. Again: I live not in myself, but I become Portion of that around me, and to me High mountains are a feeling, but the hum Of human cities torture; I can see Nothing to loathe in Nature save to be A link reluctant in a fleshly chain, Class'd among creatures, when the soul can flee, And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain Of ocean, or the stars, mingle, and not in vain. Are not the mountains, waves, and skies a part Of me and of my soul, as I of them? Is not the love of these deep in my heart With a pure passion? Should I not contemn All objects, if compared with these? Love of Nature was a passion with him, and when he looked Upon the peopled desert past As on a place of agony and strife, mountains gave him a sense of freedom. He praised the Rhine: Where Nature, nor too sombre nor too gay, Wild but not rude, awful yet not austere, Is to the mellow earth as autumn to the year. and far more the Alps: Above me are the Alps, The palaces of Nature, whose vast walls Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps, And throned eternity in icy halls Of cold sublimity, where forms and falls The avalanche, the thunderbolt of snow! All that expands the spirit, yet appals, Gather around these summits, as to shew How Earth may pierce to Heaven, yet leave vain man below. On the Lake of Geneva: Ye stars which are the poetry of heaven... All heaven and earth are still--though not in sleep, But breathless, as we grow when feeling most; And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep. All heaven and earth are still: from the high host Of stars, to the lull'd lake and mountain coast, All is concenter'd in a life intense, Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost, But hath a part of being, and a sense Of that which is of all Creator and defence. And this is in the night. Most glorious night, Thou wert not sent for slumber; let me be A sharer in thy fierce and far delight, A portion of the tempest and of thee! How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea, And the big rain comes dancing to the earth! And now again 'tis black--and now, the glee Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain mirth, As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth. But where of ye, oh tempests, is the goal? Are ye like those within the human breast? Or do ye find, at length, like eagles, some high nest?