Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Switzerland and Austria: Vol. XVI. 1876–79.
Lake Uri
By William Wordsworth (1770–1850)F
To sterner pleasure, where, by Uri’s lake,
In Nature’s pristine majesty outspread,
Winds neither road nor path for foot to tread:
The rocks rise naked as a wall, or stretch
Far o’er the water, hung with groves of beech;
Aerial pines from loftier steeps ascend,
Nor stop but where creation seems to end.
Yet here and there, if mid the savage scene
Appears a scanty plot of smiling green,
Up from the lake a zigzag path will creep,
To reach a small wood-hut hung boldly on the steep.
Before those thresholds (never can they know
The face of traveller passing to and fro)
No peasant leans upon his pole, to tell
For whom at morning tolled the funeral bell;
Their watch-dog ne’er his angry bark foregoes,
Touched by the beggar’s moan of human woes;
The shady porch ne’er offered a cool seat
To pilgrims overcome by summer’s heat.