THE CHAMOIS HUNTER. 87 



the following verses are a translation ; and I give them 

 here, because they seem to be not misplaced in a pic- 

 ture of mountain life. 



CJjamofe Hunter. 



Where Edelweis* blooms on the bare rock's face, 

 Up there right well do I know each place ; 

 Up there how gladsome is life, how free ! 

 Methinks it could nowhere more joyous be. 



No praters are there to watch and pry, 

 It's too far for them, 'tis up too high ; 

 Up there you are with your God alone, 

 And mild and better your heart has grown. 



And let them say whatever they will, 

 By night 't is there so solemn and still ; 

 And when the peaks in the starlight gleam 

 To pray more readily then I seem. 



A chamois -hunter you think is poor 

 And more forlorn than the veriest boor ; 

 Yet it is not so ; for look you, if 't were, 

 How sad his fate should his foot but err ? 



* Edelweis Gnaphalium Leontopodium a flower met with only 

 on some of the highest mountains in certain parts of Tyrol and Ba- 

 varia. It is to be found in Berchtesgaden, and on the Scharfreuter 

 in the Hinter Eiss. It is much valued for the snowy purity of its 

 colour, as well as on account of the difficulty of getting it. The very 

 name, " Noble Purity," (edel, noble, iceiss, white,) has a charm about 

 it. Strangely enough it always grows in a spot to be reached only 

 with the utmost peril. You will see a tuft of its beautifully white 

 flowers overhanging a precipice, or waving on a perpendicular wall 

 of rock, to be approached but by a ledge, where perhaps a chamois 

 could hardly stand. But it is this very difficulty of acquisition which 

 gives the flower so peculiar a value, and impels many a youth to 

 brave the danger, that he may get a posy of Edelweis for the hat or 

 the bosom of the girl he loves ; and often has such a one fallen over 

 the rocks just as he had reached it, and been found dead, in his hand 

 the flower of such fatal beauty, which he still held firmly grasped. 



