"Got down to our horses again; ate something; remounted; heard the avalanches still: came to a morass; Hobhouse dismounted to get over well; I tried to pass my horse over; the horse sunk up to the chin, and of course he and I were in the mud together; bemired, but not hurt; laughed, and rode on. Arrived at the Grindenwald; dined, mounted again, and rode to the higher glacier--like _a frozen hurricane_.[4] Starlight, beautiful, but a devil of a path! Never mind, got safe in; a little lightning, but the whole of the day as fine in point of weather as the day on which Paradise was made. Passed _whole woods of withered pines, all withered_; trunks stripped and lifeless, branches lifeless; done by a single winter."[5] [5] Like these _blasted pines, Wrecks of a single winter, barkless, branchless_ MANFRED. _Shelley and Byron,_ It appears, first met at Geneva:-- There was no want of disposition towards acquaintance on either side, and an intimacy almost immediately sprung up between them. Among the tastes common to both, that for boating was not the least strong; and in this beautiful region they had more than ordinary temptations to indulge in it. Every evening, during their residence under the same roof at Sécheron, they embarked, accompanied by the ladies and Polidori, on the Lake; and to the feelings and fancies inspired by these excursions, which were not unfrequently prolonged into the hour of moonlight, we are indebted for some of those enchanting stanzas[6] in which the poet has given way to his passionate love of Nature so fervidly. [6] Childe Harold, Canto 3. "There breathes a living fragrance from the shore Of flowers yet fresh with childhood; on the ear Drips the light drop of the suspended oar. * * * * * At intervals, some bird from out the brakes Starts into voice a moment, then is still There seems a floating whisper on the hill, But that is fancy,--for the starlight dews All silently their tears of love instil, Weeping themselves away."