Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Switzerland and Austria: Vol. XVI. 1876–79.

Austria: Carpathian Mountains, Hungary

The Frontier

By Edna Dean Proctor (1829–1923)

O THE GLORIOUS purple line

Of the mountains lifted along the west!

Bright, in the sun, their summits shine;

Dark, in the shade, their valleys rest.

Cossack and Tartar may hold the plains,

And the rivers that creep to a tideless sea;

Mine be the heights where the eagle reigns,

And cataracts thunder, and winds blow free!

Not for the steepe, with its desert sheen,

From Austria’s border to China’s wall,

Would I give the upland pasture’s green,

The beech-tree’s shadow, the brooklet’s fall.

Vanish, O weary, mournful level!

Welcome, O wind my brow that fans!

In the splendor of earth again I revel,

Greeting the purple Carpathians!