The Alps at Day-break
The sun-beams streak the azure skies,
And line with light the mountain’s brow:
With hounds and horns the hunters rise,
And chase the roebuck thro’ the snow.
From rock to rock, with giant-bound,
High on their iron poles they pass;
Mute, lest the air, convuls’d by sound,
Rend from above a frozen mass.1
The goats wind slow their wonted way,
Up craggy steeps and ridges rude;
Mark’d by the wild wolf for his prey,
From desert cave or hanging wood.
And while the torrent thunders loud,
And as the echoing cliffs reply,
The huts peep o’er the morning-cloud,
Perch’d, like an eagle’s nest, on high.
Notes
1 There are passes in the Alps, where the guides tell you to move on with speed, and say nothing, lest the agitation of the air should loosen the snows above. GRAY’S MEM. sect. v. lett.4.