To that belovèd voice I list And view that father's toil and pride; My spirit climbs the mountain side. And I would ever hear the stir And turmoil of the singing winds, Then, since the vale delights me not, And it hath been my joy and lot To scale these Alpine crags of snow— T. B. Read LAKE LEMAN. `LEAR, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake, With the wild world I dwelt in, is a thing Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring. This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing To waft me from distraction; once I loved That I with stern delights should e'er have been so moved. It is the hush of night, and all between There breathes a living fragrance from the shore, STORM IN THE ALPS. THE sky is changed! — and such a change! Oh night, And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong, Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light Of a dark eye in woman! Far along, From peak to peak, the rattling crags among Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone cloud, But every mountain now hath found a tongue, And Jura answers, through her misty shroud, Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud! And this is in the 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! Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain-mirth, As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth. Lord Byron. DREAMING OR WAKING? OME say that gleams of a remoter world Visit the soul in sleep, — that death is slumber, In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep Its circles? for the very spirit fails, Driven like a homeless cloud from steep to steep Of frozen floods, unfathomable deeps, Save when the eagle brings some hunter's bone, None can reply — all seems eternal now. The wilderness has a mysterious tongue Shelley. MONT BLANC. ONT BLANC is the monarch of mountains; M They crowned him long ago On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds, With a diadem of snow. Around his waist are forests braced, The glacier's cold and restless mass I am the spirit of the place, Could make the mountain bow Byron THE FIRST GLIMPSE. HAT very day, TH From a bare ridge, we also first beheld Unveiled the summit of Mont Blanc, and grieved To have a soulless image on the eye That had usurped upon a living thought That never more could be. The wondrous Vale Five rivers broad and vast, made rich amends, There small birds warble from the leafy trees, |