THE HOSPICE OF ST. BERNARD. 35 



But thine the solitude unchanged since first 

 The virgin day-beam of creation burst; 

 And thine the deathless majesty sublime, 

 Which nature yields not to the wreck of time — 

 Proudly for thee her monarch mountains rise, 

 Sons of the earth, yet kindred of the skies. 



Fair are the Edens of the south, whose gales 

 Blow soft thro' balmy shades and emerald vales — 

 Bright are their sunny meads, and blooming isles, 

 And streams, which glisten with unnumbered smiles, 

 Forgetting, as in happier course they flow. 

 The distant heights, which nurse their parent snow — 

 Yet not in hill or dale — in field or flood — 

 Not in the leafy umbrage of the wood — 

 Not in the silver music of the wave. 

 Nor those blue lakes the rose-clad islets pave, 

 Lives tbere that voice, which round the mountain's form 

 Speaks in the fearful accents of the storm — 

 That eloquence, which bids the soul confess 

 At once eternity and nothingness. — 



Nor here shall mystic grandeur reign alone, 

 Firm on her icy towers, and crystal throne — 

 'Mid trackless wilds, and desolation drear, 

 Has Pity dared her hallowed home to rear. 

 And bade the temple of her refuge stand, 

 A sacred Zoar in a death-fraught land. 

 What tho' the broad and massive structure rise 

 Rude and deformed before the gazer's eyes ? 

 Tho' roughly hewn of native rock its walls, 

 And formed of native fir its humble halls ? 

 Yet not the piles of old on Vesta's steep. 

 Still o'er whose ruins classic muses weep — 

 No fabric mirror'd in Cayster's stream — 

 Nor altar warm with wisdom's holier beam, 

 Where yet too oft has pride unheeding trod 

 The courts devoted to a Christian's God, 

 Shall with that artless shrine compete, or share 

 The living awe — the spell that breatheth there. 



The snow-crowned peaks, upon whose towering breast 

 The thunder-clouds in fearful slumber rest — 

 The death-like solitude of that still vale, 

 Where never verdure greets the wintry gale — 

 The waveless lake, on whose dead surface falls 

 The chilling shadow of those sacred walls — 

 And that sepulchral cave, in whose dark gloom 

 Repose the shroudless inmates of the tomb. 

 Blanched by the piercing wind, whose frozen breath 

 Preserves the marble character in death : 



