Sonnet to Lake Leman

ROUSSEAU

De Staël

- Voltaire

our Gibbon — and

Leman! these names are worthy of thy shore,
Thy shore of names like these! wert thou no more
Their memory thy remembrance would recall:
To them thy banks were lovely as to all,
But they have made them lovelier, for the love
Of mighty minds doth hallow in the core
Of human hearts the ruin of a wall

Where dwelt the wise and wondrous; but by thee
How much more, Lake of Beauty! do we feel,
In sweetly gliding o'er thy crystal sea,

The wild glow of that not ungentle zeal,
Which of the heirs of immortality

Is proud, and makes the breath of glory real!

Clarens

(From Childe Harold, Canto II)

Lord Byron.

CLA

LARENS! sweet Clarens, birthplace of deep love!

Thine air is the young breath of passionate thought;

Thy trees take root in love; the snows above

The very glaciers have his colors caught, And sunset into rose-hues sees them wrought By rays which sleep there lovingly; the rocks, The permanent crags, tell here of love, who sought In them a refuge from the worldly shocks, Which stir and sting the soul with hope that wooes, then mocks.

Clarens! by heavenly feet thy paths are trod, — Undying Love's, who here ascends a throne To which the steps are mountains; where the god Is a pervading life to light, so shown Not on those summits solely, nor alone In the still cave and forest; o'er the flower His eye is sparkling, and his breath hath blown, His soft and summer breath, whose tender power Passes the strength of storms in their most desolate hour.

Lord Byron.

The Prisoner of Chillon

(Lake Geneva)

E

TERNAL spirit of the chainless mind!

Brightest in dungeons, Liberty, thou art, For there thy habitation is the heartThe heart which love of thee alone can bind; And when thy sons to fetters are consigned To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom Their country conquers with their martyrdom,

And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind. Chillon! thy prison is a holy place,

And thy sad floor an altar - for 'twas trod Until his very steps have left a trace,

Worn as if thy cold pavement were a sod,

By Bonnivard!

May none those marks efface!

For they appeal from tyranny to God.

I

My hair is gray, but not with years,
Nor grew it white

In a single night,

As men's have grown from sudden fears;
My limbs are bowed, though not with toil,
But rusted with a vile repose;

For they have been a dungeon's spoil,
And mine has been the fate of those
To whom the goodly earth and air
Are banned and barred — forbidden fare.
But this was for my father's faith
I suffered chains and courted death.
That father perished at the stake
For tenets he would not forsake;
And for the same his lineal race
In darkness found a dwelling place.
We were seven, who now are one
Six in youth, and one in age,
Finished as they had begun,
Proud of persecution's rage;
One in fire, and two in field,

T

Their belief in blood have sealed
Dying as their father died,

For the God their foes denied;
Three were in a dungeon cast,

Of whom this wreck is left the last.

II

There are seven pillars, of Gothic mould,
In Chillon's dungeons deep and old;
There are seven columns, massy and gray,
Dim with a dull imprisoned ray —
A sunbeam which hath lost its way,
And through the crevice and the cleft
Of the thick wall is fallen and left
Creeping o'er the floor so damp,
Like a marsh's meteor lamp;
And in each pillar there is a ring,

And in each ring there is a chain;
That iron is a cankering thing,

For in these limbs its teeth remain,
With marks that will not wear away
Till I have done with this new day,
Which now is painful to these eyes,
Which have not seen the sun so rise
I cannot count them o'er;

For years

I lost their long and heavy score

When my last brother drooped and died, And I lay living by his side.