Cornell University Library 
 PR 4785.H5T3 
 
 Thalia petasata iterutn; or, A foot ourne 
 
 3 1924 013 482 165 
 
figs' 
 
 HST3 
 
Cornell University 
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 The original of tiiis book is in 
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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 92401 34821 65 
 
THALIA PETASATA 
 
 ITERUM. 
 
THALIA PETASATA 
 
 ITERUM. 
 
 OB 
 
 A FOOT JOURNEY 
 
 DRESDEN TO VENICE, 
 
 DESCRIBED ON THE WAT IK VERSE 
 
 JAMES HENRY, M. D. 
 
 LEIPZIG, 
 
 GIESECKE & DEVEIEJSTT, PEINTEE8. 
 
 1877. 
 
TO THALIA. 
 
 Put on thy hat again , sweet mountain maid, 
 
 And come and trip it as so oft before 
 
 Thou 'st tripped it with me over hill and valley, 
 
 Linked hand in hand, and not without the shell. 
 
 Come, and behind thee, for a season, leave 
 
 Thine own Aonian Mount and sisters dear, 
 
 And breathe with me new air, and see new sights. 
 
 And hear new sounds: there 's many a sight and sound 
 
 New even to thee in this fair world immense : 
 
 And trill with me a new song, not, I hope. 
 
 To be our last, and love me daily more, 
 
 As I will thee love daily more . for evej'. 
 
 Come, come, sweet mountain maid , come once again. 
 
 Rosamond, Octob. 6. 1859. 
 
Uresden, farewell! we leave behind with pleasure 
 Thine eight long months of winter, lowering sky, 
 And clouds and smoke, a cutting north-east blast, 
 And bleak, bare land, without one hedge to shelter, 
 And trottoirs, upon which to walk secure 
 Is, even for the ad^pt, a puzzling problem; 
 And rugged pavement, where each stone apart 
 Stands like a boulder, scorning all connexion. 
 All intimate acquaintance with its neighbours. 
 Thy grinding coal-carts, too, without regret 
 "We leave behind to lumber-on incessant. 
 Awkward, unwieldy, ill-built, as it had been 
 The builder's aim to waste the drawing power, 
 And incommode the road, not draw the coal. 
 Nor even with feigned regret leave we behind, 
 To lord it undisputed over both 
 The narrow, dusty highway's pathless sides, 
 Thine ever-trundling wheelbarrows and cradles. 
 And men and women yoked in the same traces 
 With dogs, and drawing the same common load. 
 Inhospitable, mercenary Dresden, 
 Thou that exactest from the weary traveler 
 A fee for the permission to remain 
 Even 6ne night in thy foul, ill-smelling city. 
 And following the example of thy kings. 
 Who reckon in how many years so many 
 Groschen per head for seeing will repay 
 The prime cost of a picture , driv 'st a peddling. 
 
Mean trade in aufenthalts- and meldungs-karten, 
 And in gebilhr tak 'st what the opener, bolder, 
 Honester robber takes by force of arm, 
 We turn our backs upon thee; there 's the fee, 
 Tor our ahmeldung ; count it, see it 's right, 
 And let us go in god's name, and the last 
 See of thy dogged, stiff-necked lutheranism. 
 Too rational for christian, and yet not 
 Rational enough and simple, not enough 
 From humbug and chicanery free, for pure. 
 Plain, unsophisticated atheism." 
 
 We said, and paid our ransom, and our faces 
 Turned joyful southward toward a kindlier soil. 
 And warmer sun, and people less severe. 
 Less strict, less puritan, more life-enjoying 
 And healthier. It is Tuesday, June the second. 
 Of the year eighteen hundred, fifty-seven. 
 The wind fresh from the north, Reaumur plus twelve, 
 Sunny and bright the sky, with white clouds spotted. 
 The Kreuzkirch' steeple chiming one, p. m. 
 Scared by our footsteps' sound as we pass by, 
 The old inhabitants of Strehla's pond 
 Cease croaking, and their skinny, wrinkled muzzles 
 Draw under water, and hide sedulous 
 From man, the universal enemy. 
 Under the linden shade we rest a while, 
 Sipping our beer, in Strehla's Restoration, 
 And looking back contented on the cloud 
 Of mingled dust and smoke, which all the long 
 Seven winter months we for an atmosphere 
 Palmed on our sore-recalcitrating lungs. 
 
 At Ober-Lockwitz turning to the right 
 Our way along a pleasant bottom leads, 
 Quiet and grassy green, and thick with trees 
 Of various leaf: maple, and graceful birch 
 With its white ribbony rind, and great horse-chestnuts 
 Poising on every bough's end their majestic 
 
Pyramidal blossoms. Such the overwood, 
 
 With here and there a sturdy, strong-armed oak, 
 
 Protestant-like erect among his litlier 
 
 More catholic neighbours. Birds of every song. 
 
 Blackbird and thrush and nightingale enliven 
 
 The hazel underwood. Ajaart sits dreaded 
 
 Upon his solitary bough the cuckoo 
 
 Bugling alone, and in the purpling rye 
 
 The quail-king crakes, and crakes, and crakes incessant. 
 
 Pale in the hedge euonymus, and bright 
 
 Spangled the grass with ornithogalum's star. 
 
 In the clean Restoration of the flour-mill 
 
 We rest again, and drink again our topfchen; 
 
 Then onward in the evening's cool to Kreischa 
 
 And English Madam Thoman's "riitergvt" 
 
 And the Bad-Anstalt, seeking in the latter 
 
 In vain for h.dging ; the Bad-Anstalt 's empty. 
 
 Desolate the rooms, the season not begun; 
 
 So forward, through the Lungwitz promenades 
 
 Kural, to Lungwitz, with the like success. 
 
 For in the Lungwitz gasthaiis there 's a concert, 
 
 Music and dancing, all the beds engaged; 
 
 So on again, though tired, to Eeiahardsgrimma, 
 
 Where we arrive at nightfall, sup on eggs 
 
 In butter fried, and each a pint of beer ; 
 
 Then one hour chatting with the village doctor, 
 
 And reading riddles, weary go to bed. 
 
 And to a n^w day wake, refreshed, at six. 
 
 And wish each other joy we 're not in Dresden. 
 
 The morning 's bright of Wednesday, June the third, 
 Reaumur outside at seven o'clock, plus seven; 
 Inside, plus twelve. At ten we 're on the road, 
 And quickly out of sight leave Veisner's inn. 
 And the last gable-ends of Reinhardsgrimma. 
 The Goldne Hohe down on us no more 
 Looks, on our right, no more the Wilischberg 
 — Both behind left towards Dresden — as we push. 
 Eight in the sun's face, up the hill, toward'Luoliau 
 
Under tlie wooded knoll, then down again 
 
 And up again and down, and up at last 
 
 To Johnsbach, where at twelve o clock we dine 
 
 On cold roast veal and bread and lettuce-salad. 
 
 "You 're surely not a German, Sir," I said 
 
 To a guest dining at a table near us 
 
 On cervelai-wiirst and one glass of brandy, 
 
 Soon followed by a second and a third. 
 
 "I 'm a Graubtindner from the upper Eheinthal," 
 
 Smiling said he, "and you 're an Englishman". 
 
 "Not badly guessed," said I, "though not quite right. 
 
 I 've not indeed the square Teutonic forehead,- 
 
 Wide-sprawling mouth and solid chin and cheek, 
 
 And can affirm without yaw-yawing till 
 
 My own or hearer's stomach 's on the point 
 
 Of yielding-up its Mst meal, yet I 'm not 
 
 Therefore au Englishman. A deep salt sea — 
 
 Alas! not broad enough — my little island 
 
 Divides from England. There in olden time, 
 
 Under their own laws, with their own religion, 
 
 Manners and customs and' ancestral language. 
 
 Lived, hariiiing no man, happily the Irish. 
 
 But in an evil hour from England came 
 
 Armed ships across, and armed men leaped ashore. 
 
 Offering the hand of friendship and to t^ach 
 
 Better religion, manners, laws and language. 
 
 And by corruption part, and part by force, 
 
 — Woe to the weaker who lives near a stronger ! — 
 
 Got, inch by inch, possession of the land. 
 
 Rooting the natives out, and in their place 
 
 Themselves establishing. I 'm of that stock, 
 
 In Ireland born, by blood an Englishman, 
 
 But not by sympathy." "As I a Swiss, 
 
 Politically, not by inclination," 
 
 Said the Graubtindner, drawing his chair toward us 
 
 In confidence. "There is no right but might, 
 
 And slow as is man's justice, heaven's is slower." 
 
 Our new acquaintance is a man of sixty, 
 
 AVho of this grefit world scarcely less has seen 
 
Than far-adventured Ithaous himself, 
 
 For he has been in Algiers, and has crossed 
 
 The Beresina with the first Napoleon, 
 
 A spurred and booted courier; nor since Fate 
 
 At Waterloo made short work of his. master. 
 
 Has ceased through middle Europe's lands to carry. 
 
 Beneficent, the blessings of Denteia, 
 
 As, not unaptly, called by him the fay, 
 
 Whose care it is to mollify the pangs 
 
 Inflicted on humanity by Nature's 
 
 False, Nessus' present of two strings of pearl 
 
 Fair seeming, but in acrid venom dipped. 
 
 Pestiferous, malignant, the blood curdling. 
 
 Maddening the brain, embittering the sweet life. 
 
 So after dinner we set out together 
 
 Comrades well matched, the doctor and the dentist 
 
 From Johnsbach downward into Miiglitzthal 
 
 At Barenhecken; thence along the Miiglitz 
 
 Upwards toward Barenstein's baronial castle. 
 
 High on the solid gneiss rock on the right. 
 
 We seat ourselves upon the mossy bank 
 
 Provided on the roadside for the traveler 
 
 By Kammerherr von Liittichau, and drink 
 
 Out of the fountain opposite the jet d'eau. 
 
 And wander in our minds back to our lodgings 
 
 Four years ago in Dresden, in the street 
 
 Built by, and surnamed after, Liittichau; 
 
 Then onward to the tin-mill, see the crushing' 
 
 And washing of the gravel to obtain 
 
 The shining metal, more than silver useful, 
 
 And scarcely less resplendent, and look back 
 
 On Castle Barenstein behind us left. 
 
 Over the valley and dark beech wood towering, 
 
 And, humbler, on the saddle of the hill, 
 
 Stadt Barenstein, in name alone a city. 
 
 The Mtiglitz next we leave, and up the hill 
 
 To Lauenstein upon the left ascending 
 
 And Lauenstein's once strong, now mouldering schloss, 
 
 ]\[ake early halt, drink coffee, sup and sleep 
 
Im Gasthof zur Stadt TepUtz, greeted there 
 By the smiles unexpected of an old 
 Dresden acquaintance, the Silesian housemaid 
 Of the Trompeter Schlosschen, housemaid now 
 In Lauenstein, im Gasthof zur Stadt Teplitz. 
 
 Brilliant as yesterday on Reinhardsgrimma 
 Rises to-day on Lauenstein the sun, 
 Though Reaumur here, high in the Erzgebirge, 
 Shows three degrees less heat. At seven we 're forth, 
 Inhaling glad the buoyant upland air. 
 And by our yesterday's companion still 
 Escorted courteous. Rested on the frontier, 
 And drunk our first Bohemian beer, and plucked 
 Some golden Geum sprigs and Alchemilla, 
 We stand at noon upon the Miickenthurm, 
 Commanding wide the prospect of the valley 
 And town of Teplitz — granges, corn fields, spires. 
 With grassy knolls in fair confusion mixed. 
 And naked rocks and dark pine-woods Hercynian, 
 By Spitzberg peak shut-in, upon the south, 
 And Milleschauer, loftiest of the blue 
 Mittelgebirge. In the midst, the Schlossberg 
 — Acropolis abrupt — its huge boss rears. 
 Crowned with the ruins of Dobrowska Hora, 
 And lo6ks down upon Teplitz and the valley. 
 Here the Graubtindner, at his tether's length 
 Arrived, parts from us, to return alone 
 To Barenstein ; we from him part not glad. 
 For he has seen the world, and more of men 
 Learned from themselves than we from all our books. 
 Down from the Miickenthurm our way to Teplitz 
 Leads on direct through Graupen, on the left 
 Leaving the Wallfahrtsort Mariaschein, 
 Not the first Wallfahrtsort which we 've passed by 
 Irreverent, on our pilgrimages various 
 To art's or nature's lovelier, holier shrine. 
 Built by Loyola's calculating sons, 
 More than one hundred years ago and fifty, 
 
An old investment now 's Mariaschein, 
 
 Yet pays its dividends jjunctual, and its shares 
 
 Rise in the market, and the Virgin's credit, 
 
 Shaken a while, stands firm to-day as ever. 
 
 Im Gasthaus zum Tiroler-Hof in Teplitz 
 
 Arrived at three we meet our Dresden friends, 
 
 Lutheran Pastor Haase and his wife, 
 
 And Moritz L^ndemann, the accurate, 
 
 Faithful translator of my Adversaria, 
 
 To Teplitz come to spend the Whitsuntide, 
 
 As in old times the English came to Bath, 
 
 The Roman conquerors of the world to Baiae, 
 
 For Teplitz is the Czechish Bath and Baiae, 
 
 And Bath and Baiae signifies in Czechish. 
 
 "No, if you set a value on your life. 
 
 Or personal comfort, you must not through Bbhmen," 
 
 Said with a warning voice our honest host 
 
 Of the Tiroler-Hof, a Dresdener 
 
 And Lutheran. "No you must n6t through Bbhmen," 
 
 Said Pastor Haase, "they '11 maltreat and rob you. 
 
 Murder perhaps; they 're catholics every one. 
 
 As bigoted as the Devil and as wicked." 
 
 But we were Irish, and not unaccustomed 
 
 To hear the English protestant so speak 
 
 Of Ireland and his catholic Irish brother. 
 
 And turned a deaf ear, and through Bijhmen forward ! 
 
 Teplitz behind us left, and Teplitz' bathers 
 And rogueries and follies and ennui, 
 And the last protestant faces, we set out 
 On Friday, June the fifth, at ten o'clock. 
 Along the dusty, carriage- traveled road. 
 Soon for a lane exchanged, where more at ease 
 We wander, plucking wild thyme, and admiring 
 The full rich purple bloom of the Anchusa, 
 And red of the Adonis, here first time 
 Presented to us in the name of Venus, 
 Wet with the Goddess' tears or with the dew. 
 It's all alike now, even the Goddess self 
 
— Mother of love and beauty, fbster-motlier 
 Of the Aeneadae — has gone the ■way 
 Calcanda semel hominibusque deisque. 
 And listening to the cuckoo in the wood 
 On either hand, or to the lark above us 
 Filling the blue sky with his minstrelsy. 
 At one we dine in Dux, at three drink coffee 
 In Brtix, where the first kukuritz salutes 
 The southward-wending traveler's longing eye; 
 The other crops are northern; vetches, beans, 
 Oats and potatoes, rye and wheat and barley. 
 The road 's on either side with apple trees 
 And pear trees garnished , as in Wiirtemberg, 
 But a week's journey brings you to no vine. 
 Henbane luxuriates, and a delicate Lotus, 
 Unseen by us before, adorns the road ' 
 
 With its pale sulphur, almost primrose, bloom. 
 We pass between the Spitzberg on the left 
 And Schiessberg on the right hand, and arriving 
 Towards eight at Welinsschloss, in the lower inn 
 Meet — nay, not murderers, but civility 
 And kindness and good supper and good bed. 
 
 Saturday morning's splendid, June the sixth; 
 And we enjoy it, early on the road 
 After an early breakfast, while the lark 
 Is still upon his first flight, nor has yet 
 Dipped from the golden clouds to greet his mate 
 On her eggs sitting in the clover field. 
 High on its hill above the Eger see 
 The walled-in town of Saatz. A promenade 
 Of sweet robinia in full blossom leads 
 Steep from the chain-bridge upward to the portal 
 Narrow and Gothic-arched, and by a tower. 
 Which for defence might once have served, surmounted. 
 The chain-bridge reached ere noon, and climbed the Anlage, 
 And a last backward glance of admiration 
 Cast from above upon the variegated 
 Wide landscape spread below, and bridge, and Eger 
 
Rushing to meet the Elbe at Leutmeritz, 
 
 And cleared the portal, guarded now no more 
 
 Unless by the toll-gatherer of Saatz, 
 
 We cross the "Ring" enlivened by the Fair, 
 
 And in "zum schwarzen Baren" rest and dine, 
 
 And hear Bohemian music. An lopas, 
 
 Blind and in tatters, sings how fair the world. 
 
 Of love and beauty sings, and on his harp 
 
 Plays, to amuse, while his own heart is breaking. 
 
 Onward, at half-past twelve, through Reitschowitz 
 
 And Milschowitz, and up the bare, bleak hill. 
 
 Under a solitary elm, mid-way. 
 
 Sleeps, on the grass, a full-accoutred soldier; 
 
 His helmet, laid beside him, and his sword's 
 
 Bright polished scabbard glitter in the sunbeams. 
 
 My daughter, less gallant than sleeping Milton's 
 
 Inamorata, earns no pair of gloves, 
 
 Leaves in the sleeper's hand no penciled sonnet, 
 
 But turns away indifferent and explores 
 
 The many-tunneled dwelling of the wasp 
 
 In the soft sandstone of the roadside rock. 
 
 And curious marks how the sagacious builder 
 
 Has every separate tunnel's opening lengthened 
 
 With a projecting, downward-curving porch 
 
 Of sandstone particles agglutinated. 
 
 So as to exclude at once both wind and rain. 
 
 And keep the interior homestead dry and warm,^ 
 
 And queries with herself: if so indeed 
 
 Sagacious were the builder, and not merely 
 
 Bent to get rid of inconvenient rubbish. 
 
 Sceptical query! met by answer prompt: 
 
 Doubly sagacious, to so manifest 
 
 Purpose to turn mere inconvenient rubbish. 
 
 Of Albion's shore the chalky soil reminds us 
 
 As we draw near to Flbhau, where at six 
 
 We drink our coffee, and had gladly slept. 
 
 Tired and with eight miles to the next night-quarters. 
 
 But in the house are carpenters and masons, 
 
 And our host, with a rudeness little Czechish, 
 
Gives us to understand we 're not quite welcome. 
 
 So on the inliospitable "Hospoda" 
 
 Turning our backs ill-pleased, we follow-on 
 
 Through Strojetitz, the rugged, half-made road. 
 
 The taper poles stand stately in the hopyards ; 
 
 The dresser, stooping, guides with gentle hand, 
 
 And to their bases binds the curling shoot 
 
 With double straw halms; or, his day's toil ended, 
 
 Draws on his coat and, weary, plods toward home. 
 
 Poterium Sanguisorba, purple Lychnis, 
 
 Tall, virulent henbane with its jaundiced blossom, 
 
 And gray leaves spreading like a prince's plume. 
 
 Daisies closed for the night, campanulas, 
 
 And silvery potentillas the road garnish 
 
 On both sides with a variegated limbus. 
 
 The cuckoo ceases not; the evening thrush 
 
 Answers the cuckoo; and the bat whirrs by. 
 
 Below us on the right, off side the valley. 
 
 The solstice sun — candescent all day long 
 
 In cloudless empyrean, and, arrived 
 
 At his day's goal, candescent still and sparkling — 
 
 Turns into chrysolite hill, road and valley. 
 
 And on tlie left-hand chrysolite projects 
 
 Our silhouettes gigantic grown since noon. 
 
 Cooler the air; we don our coats, and quicken 
 
 Our steps though tired, and, as the full moon rises 
 
 Euddy behind the pear-trees, reach, ere yet 
 
 Quite sunk the day, our "Griin Baum" inn in Jechnitz. 
 
 The landlord 's a rich, comfortable boor 
 Who shows us small politeness, and next day, 
 Sunday, the seventh of June, at half past eight, 
 We leave without regret our "Griin Baum" inn. 
 And on through Dlesko village and the village 
 Of Poderzanka, living sight or sound 
 Observed in neither, and, ascending slow. 
 Arrive ere noon, and dine at Hoch Lib(5n, 
 High on the bare, bleak hill's comb. Onward then 
 Through the meierhof, where, as we rest a while. 
 
Tired, on the green sward, overhead a falcon 
 Comes, on his black and white sails hovering noiseless, 
 And round about us wheels in airy orbs. 
 Alighting oft, and oft upon the wing — 
 Challenge to us to spread our pinions out 
 And spurn the ground, and cleave with him the air. 
 In vain ! the fetters of our destiny- 
 Confine us, and away he soars at last. 
 Leaving us there to clank our leaden chain. 
 Lonely the country round, and lonelier still 
 The red-pine forest, by no sight or sound 
 Of living thing enlivened, yet not dismal, 
 For, overhead, between the pine-tree tops 
 We see in patches of still-varying form 
 The glowing sapphire of the summer sky. 
 And underfoot tread less the partially 
 Sun-mottled shadow of the dark pine wood, 
 Than the reflexion of the vertical sun, 
 Variously by the till pities intercepted. 
 Arrived at Plass ere three, and by a large. 
 Full glass refreshed, each, of black, milkless coffee. 
 We pay our visit to the convent building. 
 Convent no more, since by the godless hand 
 Of Kaiser Josef, in the year of grace. 
 One thousand and seven hundred five and eighty. 
 Dissolved the holy brotherhood Cistertian, 
 And carried-off to Prague the plate and jewels. 
 A less ungodly Josef, Josef Streer, 
 Plass' pfarrer and decan, receives us kindly. 
 And through the building courteously conducts. 
 And tells us how seven hundred years ago 
 King Wladislaus, tired all day with hunting, 
 Plere in the wild wood spread his mantle out, 
 And laid him down to sleep, and, in a dream. 
 Saw coming toward him wide-mouthed a she bear 
 With her two cubs a-gallop, and awaking 
 Sudden, affrighted, scarce sufficient timely, 
 Blew on his h<rrn and called his huntsmen round him. 
 Ere on him wide mouthed came the bear a-gallop 
 
With her two cubs, which while the huntsmen thwart 
 
 With spear and hound, and harry through the wood, 
 
 The good king down again upon his mantle 
 
 Laid him to sleep, and dreamed he saw in Franken 
 
 Stately with tower and cupola, a cloister 
 
 Cistertian, tapers in the chapel lit, 
 
 The brethren singing vespers in the choir. 
 
 And, waking, vowed a vow with tower to build 
 
 And cupola, upon the site, a cloister. 
 
 Match of his vision's, and to call it Plasst, 
 
 Because 'twas on a mantle, plasst in Czechish, 
 
 He dreamed the dream which warned him of the bears. 
 
 "Behold him there, king Wladislaus second," 
 
 Proceeded the deem, and to a picture 
 
 With his forefinger pointing, read the scroll: 
 
 "Vivat perpetuas in aeternitates 
 
 Hujus coenobii fundator pius." 
 
 And there beside him see the second founder, 
 
 'Titel — der zweite Trojer' — who rebuilt. 
 
 Only one hundred years ago and forty. 
 
 Stately as here you see, the ancient convent 
 
 Grown grey with time, and mouldering, and there 's Tangier, 
 
 The pious abbot, who some years before 
 
 Rebuilt the church. And see this sacristy. 
 
 How lofty, noble, plain and unaffected! 
 
 In similar style a n^w church, and to form 
 
 One building with the sacristy, was projected, 
 
 When the strong hand of power dispersed the brethren, 
 
 And to profane use turned the cloister building: 
 
 Here's the post-office; the gendarmerie 
 
 Have here their quarters; there's the village school-house; 
 
 Part 's empty, and part 's let to individuals; 
 
 The parish priest, your servant, Josef Streer, 
 
 Has here apartments; the refectory 
 
 Lodges the superintendent of the district; 
 
 And in the once right noble Prelatiir 
 
 — See standing there apart the massive pile — 
 
 Fi&st Richard Metternich, jpatronus JPlassii, 
 
 Rusticates thre(5 weeks, every second summer. 
 
So having said, and shown us the whole building, 
 
 And on our way accompanied a while, 
 
 Asking us many questions about Ireland, 
 
 And Ireland's only hero, only man, 
 
 Daniel O'Connell! — ah, gone to his audit — 
 
 The courteous Pfarrer to protecting heaven 
 
 Commends us, and takes leave, and toward Plass turns 
 
 His slow, age-stricken step. We bid farewell 
 
 Grateful, and up the hill alert to Eibnitz, 
 
 Less than an hour by the old road direct. 
 
 And, safe arrived with sundown, svq) and sleep. 
 
 The morning sun of Monday, June the eighth. 
 In vain shines for the sluggards, who sleep on, 
 As if till seven there were no day in Eibnitz. 
 Scarcely at half past eight we 're on the road, 
 Scarcely at half past nine the dark wood enter 
 Of red-trunked Scottish pine, near Kasenau. 
 Grateful to dazzled eyes and sweating skin 
 The expanded green umbrella of the wood; 
 Grateful the cool grass of the long allies 
 To the hot, dusty feet; but water's none: 
 Few springs or brooks in this high lying land. 
 And even the few that were, by ten long days 
 Of drought have been dried-up — stay, what means thisV 
 A full-length statue of Saint Nepomuk 
 Here in the middle of the wild, wild wood! 
 Lo! the starred nimbus radiant round his head, 
 And cradled in his arms the crucifix: 
 There must be water near; Saint Nepomuk 
 Signifies water; in his single person 
 Embodies the whole company of Naiads 
 And river-gods, for modern superstitions 
 Are comprehensive, and one modern idol 
 Answers the purpose of a thousand ancient. 
 We take a narrow pathway to the right 
 Behind the statue, come to a draw-well, , 
 Bucket and ladle, and, our thirst assuaged. 
 Return and pay our compliments to the saint. 
 
In Tremoschna at one o'clock we dine, 
 
 Content, not being Jews, upon pork cutlet, 
 
 But without coffee after, for our hostess 
 
 Will not, or cannot but of chicory 
 
 j\Iake coffee ; so we leave the bitter draught 
 
 For knaves to sell and easy folk to swallow, 
 
 And parliaments to label: "chicory"; 
 
 And onward through the Scotch fir-wood toward Pilsen, 
 
 Under a darkening sky and gathering storm, 
 
 And distant thunder growling in the east. 
 
 Scarcely before the rain, arrived at three 
 
 We cross the Mies bridge, and the market-place 
 
 Crowded with pilgrims to the Heiligenberg: 
 
 Women and men, each one with staff in hand, 
 
 And stockings soled with felt, and white hemp wallet 
 
 Over one shoulder slant across the back. 
 
 Way-worn they All seem, whether in groups standing 
 
 And with each other taking serious counsel, 
 
 Or under the shop windows seated supping 
 
 Their barley porridge, and their black bread slicing, 
 
 Or sleeping stretched-out at full length beside 
 
 The church-steps in the middle of the Platz, 
 
 A spectacle to move the heart to pity, 
 
 Less for the pilgrims than unhapjjy man 
 
 Full of his hopes and fears and to no purpose 
 
 Jack-o'-the-lanterned through a quagmire world. 
 
 We spend in Waldeck's excellent hotel 
 
 The rainy evening, writing home long letters, 
 
 Reading newspd,per garbage, drinking coffee 
 
 — The fragrant Arab bean, unchicoried — 
 
 And early sup and early go to bed. 
 
 And early wake — alas! to a rainy day. 
 
 I never liked a wedding — the rejoicings. 
 For me, have always less of joy than sadness, — 
 But of all weddings saddest is to me 
 Pluvious Jove's wedding with prolific Terra. 
 Dreary to me the thick, damp, misty air; 
 The leaden, lowering clouds; the sun's eclipse; 
 
Nor ever without horror do I heai-, 
 
 Th' artillery salvoes or the startling flash 
 
 See, of the fireworks; nay, there's not for me 
 
 In all the empty realms of sound, a sound 
 
 Duller or more monotonous than the patter 
 
 Of the black nutshells upon roof and windows. 
 
 Our letters posted, and the sky become, 
 
 Toward noon, less uniformly thick and murky. 
 
 We dine compendious, and along the smooth — 
 
 And dry, despite the rain — quartz-sanded road 
 
 Set out alert for Przestitz, flo-n'ering lindens 
 
 On either hand and sycamores in seed. 
 
 And white robinias scenting all the air. 
 
 Eddinaberg uplifts, upon our left, 
 
 Its dark pine woods and Waldstein's crowning castle; 
 
 Over green waving fields of wheat and rye 
 
 Our eye expatiates wide upon the right 
 
 To Weipernitz's whitewashed church and gables. 
 
 'Cross the Kadbiisa then, and up the hill 
 
 Along the poplar-colonuaded street 
 
 Of Littiz' smiling, scarce Bohemian, village; 
 
 For here we leave behind the Sclavish race 
 
 Of stock Bohemians, and begin to meet 
 
 German Bohemians and the German language, 
 
 To us, accustomed almost from our cradles 
 
 To Schiller's countrymen and Schiller's tongue. 
 
 More than the Czechish grateful to the ear. 
 
 More than the Czech congenial to the heart. 
 
 Adieu at Littiz to the sycamore. 
 
 Linden and sweet robinia promenade. 
 
 Damsons receive us now, with poplars mixed, 
 
 A stunted row on either side the road. 
 
 It rains and clears and rains again and clears 
 
 Ere we reach Schlowitz and a glass of beer. 
 
 Two hard-boiled eggs each, and a half-hour's rest. 
 
 Suspended by two cords between two posts. 
 
 Edge upwards, havigs before each house in SchlowHz 
 
 A four-foot long and two-foot deep hard board. 
 
 And, by the finger pushed or by the wind. 
 
Swings freely to and fro. A string hangs over 
 
 The board's edge, and on either side descending 
 
 Suspends two hammers, each of hardest wood : — 
 
 "What means this swinging board, these swinging hammersy" 
 
 Said I to a hussar who on a bench 
 
 Lay wrajat-up in his long white riding-cloak, 
 
 Half lounging, half asleep: — "That board 's the Klopfbret" 
 
 He answered civilly, "and with those hammers 
 
 Three times each day, as regular as the sun. 
 
 At morning, noon, and evening foddering hour. 
 
 We rattle on it, to call out the boors 
 
 To bring our horses corn and hay and water," 
 
 The Magyar hussars behind us left 
 
 To batten upon Schlowitz, we pursue 
 
 Along the pear-and-damson-garnished road. 
 
 Under a leaden, sometimes showery, sky. 
 
 Through an ungenial land, our evening way. 
 
 And ere three hours see rising right before us. 
 
 High on the hill, the massy church of Przestitz, 
 
 With its unfinished steeples — better so. 
 
 Than to completion brought the ugliness. 
 
 Przestitz at five reached, we put up our horses, — 
 
 That is, our tired selves — at the Austrian Kaiser, 
 
 Przestitz 's not too good, though best, hotel. 
 
 And, after coffee and an early supper, 
 
 Gladly to b^d go and sleep sound all night. 
 
 And wake next morning to more rain, more rain. 
 
 "The thirsty plants and arid fields admire 
 And bless god's providence for this fine wet morning," 
 Said to me on the stairs a pietist. 
 Meeting me coming down from my bedchamber, — 
 For in half barbarous Przestitz as untiring 
 As in enlightened London, pietism 
 Ceases not to obtrude, on learned alike 
 And on unlearned, its oft-convicted lie: — 
 "Nay," replied I, with so much piety 
 Of voice and manner as on s6 short notice, 
 Not being an adept, I could well put-on — 
 
"Limit not so tlie> providence of god; 
 
 Not your parched uplands only, but the hay 
 
 That lodged lies rotting in the valley bottoms 
 
 Praises god's providence for this fine wet morning; 
 
 The swagged and drooping wheat-halm, of its pollen 
 
 Washed by the heavy raindrops, and left barren. 
 
 Praises god's providence for this fine wet morning; 
 
 Even the poor widow, who, two hours ago, 
 
 Lost in the river's flood her only son, 
 
 Praises god's providence for this fine wet morning; 
 
 And I, for my part, every morning rising, 
 
 Make it a point to bless god's providence 
 
 For the good weather he has pleased to send, 
 
 And only when my thanksgiving is ended. 
 
 Out of the window look, to see what weather. 
 
 Wet, dry, or cold, or hot to send has pleased him." 
 
 Dinner at twelve, at half past two black coffee 
 
 • — So called and paid-for, but of chicory made — - 
 
 And, the sky brightening, we set out at last, 
 
 Reaumur at plus thirteen, the rain still dropping. 
 
 And up the southward road before the wind 
 
 G-o drifting half, half rowing. Schwihau Stadt 
 
 At half-past five affords us bread and beer 
 
 And not unwelcome rest. The evening sun 
 
 The clouds had scattered and, resplendent shining 
 
 Down from the pine-clad hill's comb on the right. 
 
 Threw Schwihau castle's shadow on the river. 
 
 And flooded holms, and steeped in golden light 
 
 The road before us and the left-hand hills. 
 
 Conspicuous with his starry coronet, 
 
 The patron Saint protects the double bridge 
 
 Under whose arches the swollen Oglava 
 
 Makes her way north, toward Pilsen and the Mies. 
 
 Tall aspens tremble either side the road. 
 
 White flocks of geese the l^a graze, white Spiraea 
 
 And flowering clover pc^rfume all the air. 
 
 After two hours of various hill and valley, 
 
 Woodside and rivulet and sheep-browsed knoll, 
 
 And marshy hollow full of meadow saffron 
 
Maturing only now its last year's seed, 
 First at Stiepanowitz we come in sigM 
 Of Klattau on the rising ground below us 
 Dim througli the twilight peering with its tall 
 Pointed black tower and white two steepled church. 
 One half hour more, and in the great gaststube 
 Of Sandner's White Rose inn upon the Platz 
 — Witliin the shadow of the tall black tower 
 And white, two-steepled church together jammed 
 Into the left hand corner of the Platz — 
 \Ye 're snug at supper seated, veal discussing. 
 Salad and stewed prunes and Bohemian beer. 
 And our most patient lungs to a mixture treating- 
 One part tabacco smoke and two parts air. 
 At ten the Zimmermadchen with black silk 
 Bavarian kerchief bound about her head 
 Concealing hair and forehead and both temples 
 And hanging down in two long queues behind. 
 To our room leads us, bids us " Wohl zii schla/en", 
 And shuts the door, and we sore tired to bed 
 After we Ve first with scarce requited trouble 
 Our ingenuity racked to make commodious 
 With help of tablecloth and sofa cushions, 
 Our incommodious, dumpy, German cribs. 
 Grumbler against heaven's ways I blame thee not. 
 In other items whatsoe'er thy fortune. 
 If thou hast often in a German crib 
 Passed a long, weary, restless, tossing night. 
 Praying in vain for day and leave to stretch 
 To their full length once more, thy crippled limbs. 
 
 Next morning, Thursday, Corpus Christi day. 
 Comes to our door, the kellnerin knock knock, 
 And, though I 'm in my shirt, must be admitted 
 Instanter, being on pious business bent 
 All things, even decency itself, must yield 
 To pious purpose: populus dat sacris, 
 Dat pater ipse viam. "In God's name" 
 Writ on the Cesar's crown secures it more 
 
Than all liis legions. So mj chamber door 
 
 Opened without delayt, I make my bow 
 
 And look respectful on, while from the window 
 
 The kellnerin in honor of the day 
 
 Hangs out a garland of green •^^'alnut l(\aves 
 
 And full-blown tulips, peonies and roses. 
 
 And on a peal of clmrchbells and a clang 
 
 Of trumpets from each corner of the Platz 
 
 See, slow and solemn out of the church door 
 
 Evolves itself the Frohnleichnam's procession! 
 
 Helmets on head and steel blades at their side, 
 
 The men of war come first, in double file, 
 
 Abou-t two hundred. Judge them by their looks. 
 
 Not one of them could find it in his heart 
 
 To harm a mouse ; they are Christians every one, 
 
 Disciples of the meek and lowly Jesus, 
 
 Who broke not the bruised reed, the smoking flax 
 
 Who quenched not, but his life upon the cross 
 
 For them gave, freely, and for us and all. 
 
 So are they, by their looks judged, and thou 'rt not 
 
 Fool enough, reader, by their swords to judge them. 
 
 Helmets, cartouches, and last year's compaign. 
 
 Next comes a gorgeous banner, gold and crimson, 
 
 Flouting the wind; a lamb its meek device. 
 
 A choir of boys next, and, in spotless white. 
 
 Their hair with roses wreathed, a choir of girls. 
 
 Singing the Lamb and of their office proud, 
 
 Gay looking round with unaffected air. 
 
 With heads uncovered bearing each in hand 
 
 A lighted taper, the lay brothers follow 
 
 Of charity so called, and the lay sisters. 
 
 Then the Frohnleichnam's banner high upheld 
 
 By eight strong arms and by two cords before 
 
 And two behind, kept steady and from swaying. 
 
 Displays the mystery that sets at nought 
 
 Touch sight and taste and smell and understanding. 
 
 Under a canopy of cloth of gold 
 
 See, next, the bishop, splendid in rauchmantel, 
 
 The monstranz in his hands. One page before him 
 
Carries his mitre, one his pastoral staff, 
 
 Two pages bear his train up, clouds of incense. 
 
 From silver censers flung, precede and follow. 
 
 Which is the God? Which is it has the worship, 
 
 He or the bit of kneaded flour and water 
 
 He carries in the monstranz? Every knee 
 
 Bows as he passes, every head is bared. 
 
 To kiss his garment's hem, to touch the cross 
 
 Broidered in gold on his white satin shoe 
 
 Is a foretaste of heaven. That man 's a fool 
 
 Who dreams of shorter path to power and honor 
 
 Than through the temple of the people's God. 
 
 Caesar was high priest ere he was dictator. 
 
 At half past nine set out, at half jiast one, 
 — Little of new observed upon the way. 
 Except Parnassia spangling white the marsh, 
 And plots of flowering poppies the bauer's heart 
 Gladdening with promise of the racy oil, 
 And further on, upon the left, the church 
 And dorf and meierhof of Bieschin, 
 And further on still, on the right, the real 
 Wide branching antlers of the painted stag 
 Upon the Wirthshaus' wall of Hof akow '^ — 
 Diue in the rural inn zum Grtinen Baum 
 In Czachrau village, high on the steep hill. 
 We sit in th' inner Stube, the host's bedroom. 
 Amidst old chests of drawers and brown oak tables 
 And three-legged stools, and hard, wood-bottomed chairs. 
 A crucifix in one corner on the wall. 
 Up near the ceiling; in the opposite corner, 
 A churn-dash and a churn half full of milk; 
 A trestle in the middle. On the trestle 
 A keg of beer whence ever and anon 
 The landlord's son, a tall, gaunt youth of twenty. 
 In long blue stockings, short black leather breeches, 
 And shirt-sleeves, draws for the guests in the outer stube, 
 
 Pionoiiiiced Horsohakof r being inDiiHuiiced like rsch. 
 20 
 
And scores the full pot, never not remembering 
 To take first sip of each, lest 't should be poison, 
 Or overflow unseemly on the board. 
 Commend me to the youth, Isee him still 
 Bending his knee joint, canny, and his td,ll head 
 Under the lintel ducking, as he slips. 
 Beer-pot in either hand, out of the inner 
 Into the outer stube, one step down. 
 The Ganymede of Czachrau on the hill-top. 
 At half past two, again upon the road, 
 Pushing our upward way to Gesseny, 
 Vaccinium nigrum, i and her fairer sister, 
 Vitis Idaea, and the tinkling cowbell 
 Tell us, at last, we are entering the mountains. 
 Nor is it long till our and their sworn friend 
 And old acquaintance, Arnica Montana, 
 With her rich triple bloom, repeats the news, 
 Confirmed anon, if witness more were needed, 
 By modest, lowly, blue Pinguicula 
 And every midge trapped in her viscid leaf: 
 We leave the dusty, long, circuitous road 
 And take with joy across the elastic lea 
 The shorter, steeper, upland path to Brunst, 
 Where, the lea left, we plunge into the thick. 
 Desolate, neglected, hoary Bohmerwald, 
 Following a path at first, on whose green edge, 
 With wood Anemone and Campanula spangled, 
 We pluck, then first time to our eyes presented, 
 A Paris quadrifolia, aptly named 
 From Ida's handsome youth. But soon the path 
 Fails, and we miss our way and wander lost 
 In the wild wood, tall trunks on every side 
 Standing erect, of aboriginal pine. 
 In family groups, son, father and grand-father. 
 Or prostrate rotting where the trenchant axe 
 Of age, unpitying woodman, felled and left them. 
 Gray they are all with lichen, and with mosses 
 
 ' Vatf. myrtillus called by the Eomans Vac. nigrum. See Fea (in Le- 
 maire's Virg.). 
 
Variously bearded; nor above our heads 
 Hangs not Usnea down from every bough 
 Her long, lank, grizzled hair. Far to the left, 
 Among the pine trunks moving, something white 
 rises at last our anxious, searching eyes. 
 As distant lighthouse in the deep, dark night 
 The wave-tossed mariner's. It 's a bawsint cow 
 Led by a man and boy, who by good fortune 
 Being bound for Ascherle, not much aside 
 From our direction, guide us through the wood's 
 Entanglement and set us on the road 
 In full view of the Arberberg, and scarce 
 From Eisenstein an hour, last town Bohemian 
 And our night quarters, where at eight arriving 
 And putting up at Fuchs's White-Eose inn 
 We sup in a Gaststube thronged with boors 
 Carousing, and the Corpus Christi day. 
 Early awaked with penitence and prayer. 
 Putting to bed with song and dance and glee. 
 The Jager most they sang who with his dog 
 '^Behutsam geht den finstern wald hinein^'-^ 
 Sweet the guitar chimes in and, side by side 
 Goes with the jager and his faithful dog 
 Into the "finstern wald hmein''^ the fiddle. 
 In at the door and open windows peep, 
 Half bold, half shy, delighted listening faces 
 Of boys and girls. A bullfinch on the wall 
 Above the music strains his little throat, 
 Or in ,the intervals a solo sings 
 Delicious. We almost forgive the morning 
 And leave them happy, and go tired to bed. 
 
 The clear, cool morning, Friday, twelfth of June, 
 Sees us from Eisenstein at nine o'clock 
 Down toward the frontier pushing — but what 's this? 
 A board shaped like the bottom of a coffin. 
 Against a roadside elm leaned, with the scroll: 
 The dead-board this of Wilhelmina Gerstner, 
 Who in the lord died happy, July fourth 
 
Of the year eighteen-hundred-two-aud-fifty: 
 
 -Her years were eighteen. Pray for her, good christians. 
 
 And here about this aged linden's trunk, 
 
 See, sloping stand three, four, five, six, such boards. 
 
 Memorials all of souls which, passed away, 
 
 Would fain by the surviving be remembered. 
 
 Memorials all of corpses on them laid 
 
 Warm from the deathbed to bo bathed with tears 
 
 And for the last time kissed ere laid apart 
 
 In the grim, darkling, dismal, silent tomb, 
 
 With their forgotten forefathers to moulder. 
 
 Therefore I praise the dead-board in the gangway 
 
 And trodden path placed, greeting the wayfarer. 
 
 And to surviving friends, too dainty nice 
 
 To endure the neighbourhood of mouldering bones. 
 
 At least recalling the orthography 
 
 Of a once loved friend's name. Fain, too, my name 
 
 Elsewhere I'd have inscribed than on an urn 
 
 In mausoleum or forsaken vault. 
 
 Here in this book behold it, tlierefore, written 
 
 And thrown in the frecfuented ways of men. 
 
 To catch the eye of passing friend or stranger 
 
 And gently force, from thought at least, a visit 
 
 To the lone inmate of the unseen tomb. 
 
 And now behind us left in Ferdinands-thai 
 The Czechish frontier, and Bavaria entered, 
 A broad smooth road with grass on both sides bordered. 
 Friendly invites and through the red-pine wood 
 Faithful conducts us. It 's the forester's house 
 That peeps so pleasant out into the sunlight. 
 Above the door the stag's horns; round about. 
 The lettuce garden, gay with bachelor's-button. 
 A little further on we recognise 
 By his fusee across his shoulders slung. 
 And suit of gray, green hat and pheasant's feather. 
 The forester through the green wood coming toward us, 
 A rustic follows carrying on his shoulder. 
 Shot with a ball right through the velvet muzzle. 
 
A yet warm roebuck — Ah, poor, harmless beast, 
 
 From Nature's tyranny, safe at last, and Man's ! 
 
 Coffee and hard-boiled eggs in Ludwigs-thal, 
 
 At half past twelve, and visit, after coffee. 
 
 To the glass factory, of polite Hans Streber. 
 
 We see the natron, see the pounded quartz. 
 
 The melting of the metal and the blowing. 
 
 The splitting of the cylinder, and heating. 
 
 Gradual, and flattening, and with a long-handled 
 
 Heavy, hot iron smoothing out so plane. 
 
 That, laid flat on a perfect marble level. 
 
 It bears uninjured a weight superimposed 
 
 On every square foot of a quarter hundred. 
 
 Washed with quicksilver next we see the foil. 
 
 And on the washed foil laid the crystal plate. 
 
 And pressed each square foot with a quarter hundred. 
 
 Oozes at every edge the superabundant 
 
 Quicksilver, and, the amalgam close adhering, 
 
 Behold to thine astonished eye presented. 
 
 In a transparent atmosphere etherial, 
 
 A second self, a second earth and sky. 
 
 Sun, moon and stars and living, moving world. 
 
 Adjournment to the garden then and greenhouse, 
 
 And coffee, and a half-hour's conversation 
 
 And not unwelcome rest in great arm-chairs 
 
 Amidst half cared exotics, for our host 
 
 Some years alone lives widowed and the orphaned 
 
 Garden and greenhouse miss the ever careful. 
 
 Kind and beneficent maternal hand. 
 
 Mutual farewells at six, and down one source 
 
 Of Eegen purling in his stony bed. 
 
 We follow-on our evening way to Zwiesel 
 
 Where Kammermeier's inn zuni Deutschen Ehein 
 
 With friendly courtesy receives us tired. 
 
 With supper entertains, and puts to bed. 
 
 Next morning after breakfast, tracing back 
 Some twenty minutes our last evening's way 
 Against the ndrth wind, Keaumur at plus seven, 
 
We pay a visit to TheresienthaVs 
 
 Hollow-glass factory, see the melting, blowing, 
 
 And staining of the metal ruby red 
 
 With golden oxide, or with cobalt, blue. 
 
 Or white with arsenic; see the moulding, shaping, 
 
 Cutting, engraving, polishing and gilding. 
 
 And, with all forms and colors, painting true. 
 
 Herr Ernest Zimmerman, the company's factor, 
 
 Politely shows the processes, and explains. 
 
 And fain had sent us to Elisienthal, 
 
 To see the great glass-founding factory 
 
 And the gigantic offspring of the mould. 
 
 But neither on our way Elisienthal, 
 
 Nor we in the art of casting huge glass mirrors 
 
 So curious as the Nurnberg Company's factor; 
 
 Therefore direct to Zwiesel back and dinner. 
 
 And on, at two, from Zwiesel up the Aschberg 
 
 Shady with tall birch, rough with granite rock 
 
 Out-cropping gray upon the rich soft carpet 
 
 Of mingled moss and bilberry and whortle; 
 
 Then cleared the hill's comb and behind us left 
 
 Zwiesel, and Regen valley, and the Arber 
 
 Four thousand feet, and more, above the sea, 
 
 Down by the sloping, sunny, southern side. 
 
 To Einchnach in the green and meadowy bottom. 
 
 Not without some short minutes pause to admire 
 
 The three-armed spruce gigantic which o'ershadows, 
 
 Midway, the slope, and with the emblems hung 
 
 Of Man's guilt and Heaven's justice, and the pact 
 
 Between the two irreconcilables, 
 
 Beguiles the kneeling rustic's weak, fond heart. 
 
 On then, from Einchnach, through the meadowy bottom. 
 
 Taking off shoes and stockings where the brook 
 
 Has by a foot o'ertopped the stepping stones, 
 
 And through the opposite hamlet on the hill 
 
 And past the grim glass-factory and between 
 
 Green fields of rye and cross the virgin lea, 
 
 And through the pine wood, up hill now, now down, 
 
 To well named Kirchberg's church upon the steep, 
 
Prospect-commanding hill, and our night quarters 
 
 In Hirtreiter's beer-brewery am Hof. 
 
 Our landlady's a pattern — not of beauty, 
 
 On Germany of all lands seldomest 
 
 Smiles Alma Venus — but of portly size, 
 
 And growth exuberant in all dimensions. 
 
 Her eye composed, apparel rather rich 
 
 Than ornamental, and air dignified, 
 
 Declare the house's mistress and tlie Juno 
 
 Of Herr Hirtreiter and high Kirchberg hill. 
 
 Not long we parley ere to the best chamber 
 
 The Kellnerin conducts us, serves with beer, 
 
 And bye and bye with supper; daylight fades, 
 
 And ere first candle lit, we 're safe in bed. 
 
 And on high Kirchberg not unsoundly sleep. 
 
 Sunday fourteenth of June, the bell has rung 
 For prayers in Kirchberg church, and young and old. 
 Women and men, their way uphill are wending. 
 As we descend, to gain by the new road 
 The rising lea before us, Eeaumur showing 
 Scarcely thirteen, the wind chill at our back, 
 The low sky drifting with us. Soon we have left 
 Kirchberg behind us, opposite side the valley, 
 And as high stand or higher. Vast the wood 
 Clothing on either side the watershed, 
 And lone as vast. Only the cuckoo's note 
 Breaks the dead silence, nor by other leaf 
 Than birch or beech the pines' monotony varied. 
 At last, far side the comb, below us opens 
 Over the forest's skirt a spreading vista 
 Of undulating plain and hill and valley. 
 Dotted with villages, and by the broad. 
 Stately, meandering Danube intersected. 
 By Paddling and Rohrstetten we descend. 
 And by the sculptured granite stone i which tells 
 
 1 The inscription is engraved in a granite tablet wliich is in relievo but has 
 no cross. Fluting round bottom of tablet where it is set into pedestal. 
 
Where fell, by treacherous shot out of the thicket, 
 
 — Fifteenth September 'twill be five, full years — 
 
 Sebastian Hilz, th' aged landlord of the inn 
 
 At Euscbertsfurth: pray for his soul, good Christians! 
 
 Perpetual winds the road, now on the verge 
 
 Of marshy meadow, on the knoll's side now, 
 
 Here in the poplars' shadow, open there 
 
 Between broad, fenceless fields of hemp or teazel 
 
 Or blue kohlrabi, or late millet braird 
 
 Tender enlerging from the cotyledon, 
 
 Till Auerbach's little inn receives us tired 
 
 And shelters friendly from a thunder-shower 
 
 Which on our steps the last two miles has hung 
 
 Darkening the cheerful sky, and, with a lunch, 
 
 Timely recruits, of eggs and bread and beer. 
 
 Onward again at four the gallant sun 
 
 At last victorious, in full flight the clouds. 
 
 And spangled joyful every bush and flower 
 
 And millet ridge and teazel top with diamonds 
 
 Across the Oh, at six to Hengersberg, 
 
 And down the left bank of the sluggish stream 
 
 To Winzer, at the Burg's foot of that name. 
 
 Where we take up night quarters at the kramer's 
 
 Inn unpretentious, sup, and soundly sleep. 
 
 Our landlord's son next morning up the Burg 
 Escorts and shows us the wide prospect round 
 Of the great Danube basin : Nesselbach 
 To the south-eastward and Hofkirchen spire, 
 This side the river, opposite, Kenzingen ; 
 South-west the Damenstift of Osterhofen, 
 Memorial of the battle on that site 
 Won by the Christian, by the Avar lost, 
 On Easter-day one thousand years ago; 
 Northwest, away upon the extreme horizon. 
 The hill and church of Bogen, longed for goal 
 Of many a way-worn, slow Bavarian pilgrim ; 
 Nearer, the separate hill of Natternberg, 
 Offside the river, marks the embouchure 
 
Of Isar, here not rolling rapidly ; 
 
 Nearer us still, northwest, this side the river, 
 
 Hengersherg and its two hills and two churches 
 
 And the once famous Niederaltaich cloister, 
 
 Southward green slopes surmounted by the Hardt's 
 
 Long, black, unbroken line shut in the view; 
 
 The northward roving eye rests on the Daxstein, 
 
 Tripartite Eusel, and the Bichlstein's 
 
 Commanding summit, where on Benno day, 
 
 Every revolving summer, Baier meets Baier, 
 
 And eats his wurst, and drinks his pot of beer, 
 
 And looks down, happy, from his canvas tent. 
 
 On happy Baiern. In the middle rolls. 
 
 Swollen by the recent rains and fresh accrued 
 
 Eegen and Isar, at our feet, the Danube, 
 
 And, flushed and overweening, floods the holms. 
 
 The heaped up ruins of the draw bridge piers 
 
 Afford us passage 'cross the grass-grown moat. 
 
 And on the walls we stand of Winzer castle, 
 
 The walls that 6nce were, now mere heaps of stones 
 
 Disjointed, and with clematis wrapped round. 
 
 Kind plant that fain the ravages would hide 
 
 Of cruel Time and far more cruel Pandours. 
 
 Agriot and pear mark still the garden's site 
 
 And flowering elder blooms where once the rose. 
 
 Descended and till next day putting off 
 
 Our onward journey, we retrace our steps 
 
 Upward along the Oil's deep, silent stream, 
 
 Gathering sweet-william and tall yellow goat's-beard, 
 
 And white spiraea odoriferous, 
 
 And sallow comfrey with the purple lip, 
 
 And the sanguineous cornel's blossom white, 
 
 And orobanche not too proud to prey 
 
 On Thymian's humble root, and vicia cracca, 
 
 And yellow Iris bordering the water. 
 
 And stately virgin's-bower, and meadow-rue. 
 
 With such a nosegay we arrive toward noon 
 
 At Hengersberg, aud after rest and coffee 
 
 In Westermeiers, towards two at Niederaltaich's 
 
Cloister once famous and on Danube's right, 
 
 On Danube's left now, and no longer famous, 
 
 Time having with one potent hand dug out 
 
 A new bed for the river, with the other 
 
 Dispersed the Benedictines, and converted 
 
 To purposes profane the convent buildings. 
 
 Only the house, so called, of God remains. 
 
 A hundred years have fled and six-and-twenty 
 
 Since Joscio, seventy-third in the long line 
 
 Of Niederaltaich's abbots, celebrated 
 
 The thousandth anniversary of the cloister, 
 
 Performing high mass in the present church. 
 
 His own foundation, and then four years finished ; 
 
 Read the inscription in the sacristy. 
 
 And how he brought from Rome and here enshrined, 
 
 Each in his crystal chest, the holy martyrs 
 
 Julius and Antoninus and great Magnus, 
 
 Noble Aurelia and most patient Julia 
 
 Behold apparelled all in cloth of gold 
 
 Crimson and clinquant, on white satin couchant, 
 
 False carbuncles for eyes, and, in the holes 
 
 Where once the breath of life played to and fro, 
 
 False sparkling emerald and sardonyx. 
 
 Upon their chapped, cracked, brainless skulls gilt crowns, 
 
 Withered palm branches crumbling into dust 
 
 Beside, not in, their well-knit once and taper, 
 
 Now dislocate and separated, digits — 
 
 Behold, if thou hast courage to behold, 
 
 The grisly skeletons, and, sistered with them 
 
 Couchant in like glasscase, on like white satin, 
 
 Her belt suspended from her fleshless wrist, 
 
 Widowed Alruna, Cham's most holy countess. 
 
 Thou hast beheld ? Well, leave them there to shock 
 
 The living sense and curdle the heart's blood, 
 
 And come with me and visit in the convent's 
 
 Once potent priory the parish deacon, 
 
 Johann Aumayer, and the parish deacon's 
 
 Worthy assistant, Peter Anzenberger, 
 
 And having paid thy compliments and taken 
 
A glance at parting at the full-lengtli portraits 
 
 Opposite the windows in the sitting-room 
 
 — This here 's Mauritius, the church's patron, 
 
 That there in the rauchmantel is Saint Gotthardt — 
 
 Return with us along the Oh to Winzer 
 
 And in the honest kramer's inn sup cheap, 
 
 And soundly sleep and wake betimes next morning 
 
 To keep us company down the Danube's side. 
 
 Who that had seen th' unclouded sun, last evening. 
 Setting in glory, had foretold, ere morning, 
 A frost, to flowering cereal and fruit-tree 
 Far and wide fatal? who had tearless seen 
 The unclouded sun this morning glorious rising 
 On field and furrow thick with icicles? 
 But we nor glorious sun unclouded rising 
 See, nor disastrous hoarfrost, but in bed, 
 Falsely luxurious (we can not deny it, 
 Elegant minstrel of the fourfold year) 
 Lying till seven, and breakfasting at eight. 
 And scarcely on the road at half past nine. 
 Pursue through Mitterndorf our onward journey. 
 In Sattling on a roadside tablet^greets us 
 The pictured legend of Saint Isidore, 
 The ploughman's patron: lo! he leaves his plough 
 Still-standing in the field and goes to church 
 When the bell rings for vespers, and, returning. 
 Finds a winged angel down from heaven descended 
 Guiding his plough and oxen, and more land 
 Ploughed in his absence of one short half-hour 
 Than, had he by the plough staid, he had ploughed 
 Himself in a whole day from morn till night. 
 Therefore the poor Gastilian ploughman's now 
 Blessed Saint Isidorus, plough and ploughman 
 Have now their patron, and the fifteenth May 
 Is Isidorus' feast through Christendom. 
 Our course is with the Danube. On our right. 
 Onward it rolls, the deep, majestic stream, 
 O'erflowiug, here and there, the meadowy holms. 
 
And, with its yellow wave, the alders bathing. 
 
 Hills on OTir left rise, clothed with pine and maple, 
 
 And — nearer still and nearer still approaching 
 
 Like hills beyond the water-narrow in 
 
 The Danube basin almost to a gorge. 
 
 Not yet within the gorge, Hofkirchen church, 
 
 Of pure and simple Gothic style, attracts us. 
 
 We enter, reverent, and from a pack 
 
 Of cards in a wire box upon the wall 
 
 Taking a card, a prayer read — read, not pray, 
 
 For the poor, suffering souls in Purgatory. 
 
 The once strong walls of Hilgart's ruined castle 
 
 Look down upon us from the granite crag. 
 
 As on we saunter gathering Lysimachia, 
 
 Eoses, Euonymus, and sweet Sweet William, 
 
 Vilshofen bridge before us, and Vilshofen 
 
 Offside the river glittering in the sun. 
 
 At half past two, across Vilshofen bridge 
 
 Eight hundred foot long, wooden, and each side 
 
 With pine trunks, end to end laid horizontal. 
 
 Massively balustraded. Three o'clock 
 
 Sees us at dinner in the weinwirth's inn 
 
 Zum Ochsen in Vilshofen. Beefsteaks, soup. 
 
 And capital Linzer wine, our bill of fare. 
 
 Leaving at four Vilshofen, and ascending 
 
 The south side of the enlarging Danube basin, 
 
 We meet descending, — not by force of song 
 
 Oeagrian, or Massylian priestess' spell — 
 
 The tall pines from the mountain. Oxen draw them. 
 
 Each on two wheels before and two behind. 
 
 One pilot goads the oxen, to the rudder 
 
 Another clings close and the lumbering load 
 
 Steers, from behind upon its downward way 
 
 To the great Danube's bosom and the Euxine. 
 
 Fertile the land, well-lodged the countryman. 
 
 With painted shutters gay and balcony. 
 
 In an enclosure stands his wooden castle. 
 
 Flanked on one side by cattle-stall and cart-shed. 
 
 By threshing-floor and granary on the other. 
 
Over the inclosure gate nailed in terrorem 
 
 Hawk, kite, and buzzard and, despite liis caution, 
 
 Sly reynard caught at last. Through Soldenau 
 
 At half past five and on through Kam we pass, 
 
 And in the protestant town of Ortenburg 
 
 Stop for the night and sup in the inn zum hirsch. 
 
 Well named, for never finer pair af antlers 
 
 Adorned gast-stube wall. At seven nest morning 
 
 Reaumur stands in our chamber at plus twelve. 
 
 We breakfast and set out, behind us leaving 
 
 Ortenburg's separate standing, vine-clad houses, 
 
 Each with its sweet robinia at the door, 
 
 And, high above them towering on the hill, 
 
 Ortenburg Castle, and at the hill's base 
 
 Eastward and south- from Ortenburg and forming 
 
 With Ortenburg one protestant cummunion 
 
 — A little sturdy, rocky isle of truth. 
 
 Believe itself, in a vast sea of error — 
 
 Dorf Steinerkirchen and tall steepled church, 
 
 And take our way by Afham mill south west 
 
 Under the splendid-shining, not hot sun. 
 
 With pear and cherry, hornbeam, oak and linden 
 
 Variously furnished our ascending road 
 
 And still ascending, past Einode Fuchshub 
 
 And past Salvator's convent secularized 
 
 And past Salvator village Steinhardt Wood 
 
 Then rises steep before us thick and dark 
 
 With various foliage and to test severe 
 
 Putting our lungs and gastronomic muscles. 
 
 But now and then from some commanding knoll 
 
 Or ridge's comb, our anxious, longing eyes 
 
 Refreshing with short glimpses of the still 
 
 Far distant Noric Alps: — "Stay! that 's the Watzmann, 
 
 And that 's the Dachstein; that, the Hohe Goell, 
 
 And look along this vista by the axe 
 
 Cleared as of purpose in the forest's thickest. 
 
 Yon level line 's the summit of the bleak 
 
 Tannengebirge." Easy the descent 
 
 And reached in forty minutes from the comb 
 
The chapel on the Kroiiberg over Griesbach. 
 Stone seats invite us and we rest a while 
 Under the lindens' shade beside the portal. 
 On one hand the Calvarienberg and kirchhof 
 Fair on the other the long range of Alps, 
 Blue tents of giants halted on their march 
 Or in entrenched camp whiling the long winter. 
 Then down the linden colonnade to Griesbach 
 And lunch of wine and coffee at the Post 
 Passing' by Ostermiinchuer's better iiin 
 And brewery, unknown to us till later, 
 And paying for our ignorance no less 
 In hard cash than in stoical endurance 
 Of bad fare, worse attendance and some rudeness. 
 Warned by the chiming clock and westering sun, 
 We 're on the road again at half past two, 
 And, frail memorial of our passing visit, 
 A full-blown garden rose plucked from the hedge, 
 Griesbach behind us leave and down the hill 
 Through the pine wood trip lightfoot, cross at Schwaim 
 The dull, canal-like Eodt, and, climbed ere five 
 The heights of Assbach (Ah! the convent church 
 Belongs now to the parish, and beer 's brewed 
 , Where once the Benedictine brothers nestled). 
 At six reach Eoththalmiinster, and put up 
 In Wochinger's hotel, and sup and sleep. 
 
 Next morning 's little Corpus Christi day. 
 And all 's astir betimes in Rothalmtinster, 
 Bells ringing, muskets firing, not one wink 
 Of sleep from five o'clock for weary traveller. 
 At seven, the platz swarms full of crowds expectant. 
 In holiday attire, men, women, children: 
 Banners stand at the corners. From the windows 
 Hang scarlet draperies, ribbons, garlands green. 
 At eight the bell tolls out and from the church 
 Winds solemn forth and stately the procession 
 What like if thou wouldst know, its picture 's painted 
 Above at Klattau, only the priest here 
 
(It being- little, not great, Corpus Cliristi, 
 
 And Rotthalmtinster but a market town, 
 
 Officiates for the bishop, and in place 
 
 Of Klattau's full two hundred^ men at arms 
 
 Walk peaceful here the four men of the fire-watch. 
 
 At nine behold us 6nce more on the road 
 
 And from the pine-clad hill's brow looking down 
 
 Upon the Inn before us, broad and bright, 
 
 Seaming the vale as with white satin ribbon, 
 
 Upon its long course from the Engadine 
 
 To Passau and the Danube. We descend,- 
 
 And forward! up the valley toward the river; 
 
 And Malching passed and Malching's green-roofed church. 
 
 With wine refresh us and beef soup at Ering. 
 
 Splendid the day and happy smiles the valley 
 
 On both sides of the Inn's broad silvery band. 
 
 Haymakers in the fields. Their ruddy cheeks 
 
 By broad white strdw hats shaded from the sun. 
 
 Blithely they sing as in long files they turn 
 
 And toss the grass out to the glowing ray. 
 
 Beyond the river on the left our view, 
 
 South-east and south, expatiates to the Alps, 
 
 Here white with snow, there cloud-capped, baring there, 
 
 Their furrowed foreheads to the imminent orb. 
 
 Low hills with walnut green or swart with pine. 
 
 Close on our right hand, bound toward north and west 
 
 The wide spread basin on whose edge our road 
 
 Fringed with sweet-william and silene nutans 
 
 And yellow latyrus and medicago 
 
 And salvia, white and purple, and anthyllis. 
 
 Winds pleasant with us toward the Austrian frontier 
 
 And bridge at Braunau cross the deep, broad Inn. 
 
 I love the Inn, and never without pleasure 
 
 Look down upon its waves of beryl pale green. 
 
 Whether, at Silva Plana, from the foot 
 
 Of snowy Julier issuing meek and mild ; 
 
 Or in loud cataract at Finstermiinz 
 
 And Landek roaring ; or its broad bright flood 
 
 Soiling mnjestic round the walls of Kufstein 
 
And under Braunau's long extended bridge; 
 
 <3r where it pours into the dark brown Danube 
 
 The contrast of its purer, clearer stream. 
 
 So, crossing Braunau's long extended bridge 
 
 And entering Braunau's sentinel-guarded gate, 
 
 I said or thought, and waved, a long farewell 
 
 To our old comrade many a pleasant day 
 
 And many a toilsome, high among the mountains 
 
 Or in the d^ep vales of the north TirM. 
 
 Our passports viseed — for on Austrian ground 
 
 Who sets his foot, had need look sharp to his passport 
 
 And our wine drunk, and not unmerited 
 
 Encomium passed upon Hanns Steininger's i 
 
 Length of beard unexampled — see him, there. 
 
 The stately burgher, standing large as life. 
 
 Tempera-painted on the southern gate's 
 
 Exterior pediment, in his right hand 
 
 The imperial patent, at his side, his sword, 
 
 The fatal beard down flowing to his feet 
 
 In double queue and trailing on the groxmd 
 
 Ominous prodigious — we set out at five. 
 
 And, where the road forks at a linden's foot 
 
 That, monumental towering there long ages. 
 
 Begins at last to bow to stronger Time, 
 
 Taking the right hand, and the pine wood entering, 
 
 Follow along the dusty, stony road. 
 
 Or on the fallen pine-foliage, smooth and slippery, 
 
 Our lonely evening way monotonous, 
 
 Or varied only by the varying lights 
 
 Shed by the golden sunset on the pines' 
 
 Red, scaly trunks and cones and dark green needles. 
 
 Till the wood opens, and upon the right 
 
 Neukirchen shows its tall and taper steeple. 
 
 Whither though tired not swerving, but ahead 
 
 Pressing with quickened step, we reach ere dark 
 
 Dafner's no whit too well kept inn at Dietzing, 
 
 ' Biirger, und Magistrats-Ratli, der StadtBi-aiiiiaii. f Sept. 28. 15G7. Iliit 
 narrow-brimmed and decorated with a spreading feather. 
 
And, to bed early after early supper, 
 Exchange this waking motley for sleep's motlier. 
 
 Friday, the nineteenth June, returned to earth 
 From many a visioned flight among the clouds 
 On wing sublime, or promenade in Eden, 
 Along brooks rolling orient pearl and gold, 
 We find our selves, at nine, ripe strawberries culling. 
 Or luzula's pale insignificant flower. 
 Or gallant, gay campanulas or phyteumas, 
 As the pine wood we tread towards Filmannsbach, 
 And Gundertshausen, where on beer and pancakes. 
 Setting at nought Hygeia's rules, we dine 
 In Wiirzinger's dear inn, and rest a while: 
 Then forth again at one, and down the hill 
 Under the Parthenon of the Eggelsberg, 
 The blessed Virgin's church of the Assumption, 
 Admiring, at each step, the bold contour 
 And bearing brave of some Goliath Alp, 
 The Watzmann it might be, or hohe Goell, 
 Gaisberg, or Untersberg, or either Stauffen, 
 Or the pyramidal peak of Sonntagshorn. 
 Nor wholly without charm of flowers our road : 
 Orchis, valerian, salvias, tragopogon, 
 Bicoloured galeopsis, chamomile, 
 And vicia cracca, centauries and pansies. 
 Spangle the fields and in the cool east wind 
 Wave graceful. Lamprechtshausen inn at five 
 Refreshes us with coffee, and, at seven, 
 Oberndorf on the Salzach opposite Laufen , 
 With roast-veal supper, beer, and welcome bed. 
 All well supplied and cheajply in Kirchgassncr's 
 Honest, unostentatious, brew-house inn. 
 
 At half past nine, next morning, up the Salzach, 
 Oft looking back on Oberndorf's long line 
 Of houses spread along the green hill's base 
 And white reflected in the Salzach's blue, 
 Or on the great dark nave of Laufen church 
 
Peninsular upon the opposite bank 
 
 Bavarian. Glowing hot the sun and bright, 
 
 Fallen the eastwind that chilled us yesterday. 
 
 "We leave the road and stretched upon the grass 
 
 Bask in the sunshine, Eeaumur thirty-three. 
 
 In the full rays. Between two rows of oaks, 
 
 Through meadows green, our path leads to the water. 
 
 And up along the water's rippling edge. 
 
 Here bare and sandy, fringed with alder, there, 
 
 Cornus sanguinea, and red-blushing roses. 
 
 And stately, tall thalictrum's pallid cyme. 
 
 On through the wood, then, over the hill's spur. 
 
 Where graceful in the oak's broad shadow bends 
 
 The turban lily, and wood lysimachia 
 
 Expands her tiny yellow petals five. 
 
 Emerged, yon 's Salzburg castle on the right 
 
 Crowning the hill down in the vale before us. 
 
 Distinct, though distant yet some four hour's journey. 
 
 Wine and short rest in Anthering at one, 
 
 And soon comes into view Maria Plain 
 
 Convent and two-towered church the earls of Plain 
 
 To mind recalling and good bishop Gandolf 
 
 And the blest Virgin's image found unharmed 
 
 In the embers' midst, when in the year of grace, 
 
 One thousand and six hundred three and thirty, 
 
 The Swedish heretic laid torch to Eegen. 
 
 But, on the Heuberg's storm-foretelling top 
 
 The white mists gathering, warn us not to loiter, 
 
 Nor aside deviate, pilgrims to the shrine 
 
 Of the blest Virgin Mother i, of Good Comfort; 
 
 So on, direct, toward Salzburg, where arrived 
 
 At half past four, dry-shod, we sup and sleep 
 
 Content in our old quarters at the Traube, 
 
 Next house to where, upon the very eve 
 
 Of finding out the secret which should turn 
 
 Death into life, and into gold base metal, 
 
 Three hundred years ago died Paracelsus, 
 
 Maria von gutem Troste. 
 
Philip Aureolus von Hohenheim 
 Bombastus Theophrastus Paracelsus, 
 ilurdered, they say, why not? for was he not 
 Reformer and the Luther of physicians. 
 The overthrower of the papal chair 
 Infallible of Galen? Ah! if ever 
 Events on earth occurring touch with joy 
 Or sorrow the departed, Galen's soul 
 A thrill of joy felt when it heard in Hades 
 Einsiedeln's great empiric was no more. 
 
 Scarce long enough the next day and the next. 
 Ancient Juvavium to perambulate, 
 The colony of Hadrian; from the Monchsberg 
 To admire the Salzach threading the white city 
 With all its minarets and domes squeezed in 
 Between the Capuzinerberg and Schlossberg 
 Yon steeple nearest to thy foot 's saint Peter's 
 Church of the Benedictines, mausoleum 
 Of sainted Rupert, Salzburg's holiest dust. 
 In the sixth century's deepest dark from Worms, 
 God's messenger, he came; the torch of truth, 
 Extinguished by the Hunns, relit; the bones 
 Of JFaximus and the iifly martyrs gathered 
 And covered with a chapel, which, rebuilt 
 By the fifth abbot Rupert, thou behold est 
 Far side the convent, in the graveyard's midst. 
 Behind the church. Saint Margaret and Saint Amand 
 Are its two patrons. In the bare rock's side, 
 Nearer and to the right hand, was his own 
 Most humble oratory, where all hours 
 He prayed God to forgive a wicked world 
 And save his suffering church. First Rupert's Hohle 
 Then Rupert's Klosterlein they called the place. 
 And then, for greater honor, dedicated 
 To Saint Aegidius, and in front of it built 
 The Kreutz Capelle which from hence thou seest. 
 Beyond, a narrow stair cut in the rock 
 Leads painful to Saint Maximus' hermitage. 
 
Ah! those were times when christian priests and hishops 
 
 Slept not on beds of down, nor dined off gold, 
 
 Nor clothed in crimson velvet and white satin. 
 
 That 's Salzburg Dome beyond the Benedictines, 
 
 As grand and strong, as fresh and fair, today. 
 
 Except some touch of yellow in the marble. 
 
 As when, two hundred years ago and forty, 
 
 Under Solari's master hand it rose. 
 
 At the command of Paris, Count Lodrone, 
 
 Salzburg's prince bishop. May it florish long 
 
 And long the bones preserve of Saint Vigilius. 
 
 That tall lank tower with cupola and ball 
 
 The church and cloister shows of the Franciscans. 
 
 Airy and light, within, on five free columns. 
 
 Hangs the hexagonal presbyterium's vault. 
 
 In the year fifteen hundred nine and ninety 
 
 Archbishop Wolfgang Dietrich on the Imberg, 
 
 (Thenceforward Capuzinerberg called therefore,) 
 
 Founded yon cloister of the Capucins 
 
 Beyond the river high among the trees. 
 
 Now southward turn thine eyes. That's Hohen Salzburg 
 
 Crowning the opposite hill this side the river. 
 
 There in those strong machicolated towers, 
 
 Fearing, alike, and feared, couched in old time 
 
 Salzburg's prince bishops, those armed men of God 
 
 Who preached, prayed, blessed, judged, punished and absolved. 
 
 Enacted and repealed and led to war. 
 
 'Twas there mild Leonhard of the golden days 
 
 Seized, and in pairs tied, back to back, half naked. 
 
 The twenty hapless notables of Salzburg 
 
 Who had dared to breathe a faint faint sigh for freedom. 
 
 Back to back tied in pairs and dragged on sledges 
 
 Half naked under January's frost, 
 
 The headsman at their side, to Manterndorf, 
 
 And had beheaded, but for the intercession. 
 
 Low upon bended knee, of bishop Berthold 
 
 Of Chiemsee, and the abbot of Saint Peter's i 
 
 I Gerettet starben sie siiinmtlich an den folgeu der erlittenen misshandlung. 
 Forster. 
 
 39 
 
Vain intercession ; every man, they perished 
 Killed Iby the hardship without help of axe. 
 'Twas there Matthaens Lang, in fifteen hundred 
 And five and twenty, in his den shut up, 
 Defied the rebel boors. 'Twas there Wolf Dietrich 
 In the next following century's sixth year 
 Beheaded Casper Vogel and his comrades, 
 And ten years after died himself, a wretched 
 Despairing, destitute, detested prisoner. 
 'Twas there — nay there it is — (above the wall 
 Thou seest the sentry's shouldered firelock glisten) 
 Franz Joseph's Croats, lounging by their cannon, 
 Count, to while time away, how many head 
 Of Salzburg burghers cross the bridge per hour, 
 And which more numerous, women, men, or children. 
 What matter? one well aimed shot sends them all. 
 Men, women, children, bridge, into the Salzach. 
 That tumulus half hid among the poplars 
 Low by the water's edge, on the opposite side 
 And higher up the river, 's Birgelstein 
 Few remnants owning now of Roman dust 
 Or cinerary urns or old Juvavium. 
 Above, high towering to the clouds, the Gaisberg 
 Looks down on all — the city and the river, 
 Castle and dome and convent — and the east 
 Shuts from the view out. To the south. Pass Lueg, 
 Distant and blue beyond Hallein and GoUing 
 Admits at once the Salzach to the scene, 
 And closes to the eye the panorama. 
 
 Tuesday, June twenty-third, at half past one 
 We follow on, despite the gathering storm, 
 Along the Furstenweg's gigantic oak 
 And linden colonnade, our southward journey. 
 The Salzach on our left, behind us Salzburg, 
 Before us, parleying with the clouds, Pass Lueg. 
 Darker the sky each moment, and the wind 
 More boisterous, and the pelting rain-drops thicker. 
 And now the gale howls cross the arched allde 
 
Stripping the oak of leaves and twigs, and snapping 
 
 Lime branches which come rattling down about us, 
 
 Our lives endangering and the path encumbering. 
 
 Scarcely we hold our feet, and, with bent knees 
 
 And garments fluttering wild before the blast, 
 
 Drift insecure, linked mutual arm in arm. 
 
 A house stands on our right hand, with its back 
 
 Turned to the road and storm; we round the corner. 
 
 And under shelter of the front stand cowering. 
 
 Safe if the r(5of hold fast. What noise is that? 
 
 A tap upon the window pane invites us. 
 
 And through the opening door we enter, thankful, 
 
 A ground-floor stube, where a spindle-twirling, 
 
 Capless, half-gray, half-bald, lean, wrinkled Sibyl 
 
 Bids us be welcome, and we take our seats 
 
 On plain deal chairs beside the plain deal table. 
 
 Expectant till it please Jove Pluvius 
 
 To clear his brow and smile serene again. 
 
 A peasant girl, close following on our steps. 
 
 The corner of the house rounds, and in haste 
 
 Enters the stube, gathers coats, shawls, hats, 
 
 Bonnets and shoes, and out again in haste 
 
 With both arms full, and rounds again the corner 
 
 And disappears. It 's fr6m the hayfield she has come; 
 
 It 's t6 the hayfield she bears much needed help. 
 
 And there they come, the haymakers, as drenched 
 
 Despite shawls, bonnets, hats, caps, coats and shoes. 
 
 As Proteus' sea-calves or as Proteus' self 
 
 When at high noon he c6mes forth from the waves 
 
 And on a rock sits counting up his flock, 
 
 Or in a coral cave takes his siesta. 
 
 And now the quiet stube 's swarming full. 
 
 And noisy as a workshop, and we 're pushed 
 
 From seat and table, and look wistful out. 
 
 And had alm6st preferred the Icjss rude storm. 
 
 Anon the clattering pewter spoons announce 
 
 Dinner, that most tyrannical of Gods 
 
 Christian or pagan, and, in the table's midst, 
 
 A vast, round bowl of coarse, brown earthenware. 
 
Steams like a crater, and, all of a sudden, 
 
 One of the rustics, in the hushed crowd's midst 
 
 Standing erect, begins to patter prayers, 
 
 Which to an end at last come, all sit down — 
 
 Some square, some sideways — round about the table 
 
 Close packed, and sup their brose cooled with their breath. 
 
 Each one his spoon safe ferrying to and fro 
 
 With pliant wrist, and elbow on the table 
 
 Pivoted. Earnest they are all and silent : 
 
 Two have their left arms round their sweethearts' waists. 
 
 Emptied the bowl, they 're on their feet again. 
 
 And prayers again are pattered, and the stube 's 
 
 Again in motion and we 're growing tired. 
 
 And the sky 's clearing, and the storm less strong ; 
 
 So, thanks said to the hospitable spinster. 
 
 We brave the road once more and, to the right 
 
 Sharp turning, and the gateless avenue entering, 
 
 Approach, between two plain stone walls, the royal 
 
 Castle of Hellbronn — ill kept residence 
 
 Of the Austrian Cesar an odd week in summer — ■ 
 
 And the court crossing and by a side door 
 
 On the right issuing and upon the left 
 
 Leaving the royal Weinschenk, gain ag'ain 
 
 And follow on the road ; and, Anif reached 
 
 Ere half past four, lunch economical 
 
 In the Obern-wirthshaus, and admire the castle 
 
 Elizabethan of the Countess Arco, 
 
 With its red flag o'ertopping the red roof 
 
 And pointed gables, and reflected gay 
 
 In the clear waters of the encircling lake. 
 
 Where the swan swims secure, and water-hens 
 
 Dip and emerge among the floating lilies. 
 
 Our way leads up the valley of the Salzach, 
 
 The river on our l^ft hand, on our right 
 
 The TJntersberg's steep flank. Beyond the holms 
 
 Far side the river, sloping pine-clad hills 
 
 Indent the sky with ever varying outline. 
 
 Light, feathery clematis, buphthalmum yellow 
 
 Cornus sanguinea, privet, harebell blue 
 
And pale euonymus adorn the roadsides. 
 
 The equalizing scythe has shorn the fields 
 
 Of all their summer glory, leaving only 
 
 To sprig the s6ft pile of the grassy plush, 
 
 Low-creeping nummularia's golden cinquelets. 
 
 We cross, and leave behind, the clear, blue Aim 
 
 From Berchtesgaden sent down to augment 
 
 The Salzach current, strong enough without it 
 
 To overset the boat, and deep enough 
 
 To swallow at one gulp the seventeen hapless 
 
 Churfiirstlich brewhouse youths of Kaltenhausen. 
 
 It 's eighty years ago, yet not forgot 
 
 In Kaltenhausen, that disastrous Sunday, 
 
 Nor yet unpitied the diversion-seekers. 
 
 At seven we reach Hallein, and for the night 
 
 Put up in Griibl's Brauhaus, sup on cutlets. 
 
 And go to bed at nine and soundly sleep 
 
 Where the green Durrenberg at once invites 
 
 The pious pilgrim to its airy shrine 
 
 And strives in vain to hide from prying eyes 
 
 And greedy hands, its darkling womb's salt treasures. 
 
 Wednesday, June twenty-fourth, "Johannisfest", 
 Vt'e leave Hallein at ten, just as the Halleiners 
 Refreshed by prayer, come tumbling out of church. 
 And cross, and, by a path close to the water. 
 Ascend along the right bank of the Salzach. 
 Entering the dark pine wood, ere ended yet 
 The first hour of our journey, we look back 
 On old Hallein spread out at Diirren's foot 
 With all its salt pans — Hall and als and Salz 
 Are but one word, and Salzburg and Hallein 
 But the more famous and less famous son 
 Of the same sire — then turn again and onward. 
 Red and white pine and larch on either hand. 
 Above our heads the livid tempest lowering. 
 Not to explode however ere we 're safely 
 Housed in Schernthaner's, at the Hirsch in Kuchl, 
 Busy discussing our boiled beef and soup, 
 
 43 
 
And whether only eighteen or quite twenty, 
 
 Our landlord's so goodhumored, smiling daughter, 
 
 As she pours out our wine and wonders why 
 
 We choose to drink it mixed with so much water. 
 
 The storm beats on the Rossfeld and clears off. 
 
 And now it 's on the Hohe Goll it heats, 
 
 And our sky 's bright again, so on through Golling, 
 
 And round the tower which closes up the end 
 
 Of Golling's street, and up the long steep hill 
 
 High on the Salzach's right bank, till aside 
 
 Invited by a signpost on our right 
 
 To take a peep at Salzach's seething "Kessel". 
 
 Helped here and there by friendly rough stone steps 
 
 Or uncouth wooden ladder sloping gradual, 
 
 Down the precipitous bank we zigzag safe, 
 
 To where the fallen-down rocks meet in the midst, 
 
 And, jammed together, bridge the torrent over. 
 
 We look down through the gaps into the abyss 
 
 Where deep below us the impeded waters 
 
 Eddy and foam and chafe and thunder through ; 
 
 Fit washing-house to purge the parted spirit's 
 
 Inured guilt, and bleach out the fleshly stain ! 
 
 Dismal to look down, to look up as dismal. 
 
 Dark pines above and spreading beachen shadow 
 
 And overhanging rocks almost shut out 
 
 The lowering sky and shield us from th' already 
 
 For some time pattering rain, but not long shield. 
 
 Dripping from every glossy leaf the shower 
 
 Begins to wet us, and for shelter drives 
 
 Under a rock's eave prominent, to crouch 
 
 Squat as two frogs, black hellebore all round 
 
 And agaric and lysimachia yellow. 
 
 And blue phyteuma, and the snow-white ball 
 
 Of opulus viburnum to the ground 
 
 Weighed by the rain. Secure we sit in shelter 
 
 Where never since the universal flood 
 
 Fell one drop water though all round were drowning. 
 
 The brightening sky at last, and freshening wind 
 
 And solar rays from every dripping leaf's 
 
Diamond-hung point refraicting-thousand colors, 
 
 Invite us forth, and other ladders mounting 
 
 And other rough stone stairs precipitous, 
 
 We come out on the road high up the Salzach 
 
 Opposite a chapel with two limes in front. 
 
 Narrow Pass Lueg — Pongau's gloomy portal — 
 
 With its strong loop-holed forts right hand and left, 
 
 Darkling before us. Not without a shudder 
 
 We follow-on our road below the forts, 
 
 Along the Salzach's right bank in the bottom, 
 
 Oft wondering odoriferous spiraea 
 
 Auruncus and sweet harebell and cyclamen 
 
 And tiny tophieldia's primrose spike, 
 
 Should choose so savage quarters and to live 
 
 In Saracen senecio's company 
 
 And hardy caltha's and rough barberry's 
 
 And crociate gentian's, nor more fear than they 
 
 The shade almost perpetual, and keen cutting 
 
 Northeast. Butlo! first object in the Pongau 
 
 Greeting us ere yet crossed the Salzach bridge 
 
 To the left bank, a roadside tablet shows 
 
 Pictured in every colour of the bow, 
 
 How, fifty years ago March twenty-third, 
 
 Shot by red-coated Gaul, fell on this spot, 
 
 Aged fifty-six complete, Herr 'Martin Seywald, 
 
 And begs one paternoster for his soul. 
 
 No word said whether for the public gain 
 
 Lawfully, or unlawfully for private. 
 
 Was victimized unfortunate Herr Seywald. 
 
 The river crossed, Schloss Hohen-Werfen rises 
 
 Abrupt before us on its limestone rock, 
 
 Towering three hundred feet and seventy-four 
 
 Above the perspective diminished waves 
 
 Which wash its base, and from the opposite 
 
 Taennengebirge ^ separate, where that range 
 
 I Tiinnen (or Jennen)-Geliirge. Ball. Eauclieck (7,r)37') south west corner 
 of Tanneugebirge overlooking Werfen. Ball. 
 
Abuts upon the Salzacli. Holie Kogl ' 
 
 Some, not inaptly some Tiroler Kopf 
 
 Call the gaunt peak which clothed with pine below 
 
 Hides in the clouds its head, and from its side 
 
 Furrowed by torrents, by long ages bleached, 
 
 Reflects the slanting sunbeam. Seldom eye 
 
 Hath rested on a drearier, lovelier sight. 
 
 Eisenhiittenwerk-Werfen's smelting works are passed 
 
 And ironfoundry, and our road, deserting 
 
 The Salzach for a moment, and ascending, 
 
 Passes Schloss Werfen on its rocky spur, 
 
 Quadrangular Schloss Werfen with its dwarf 
 
 Turrets and loop-hole windows mediaeval. 
 
 And battlements and indispensable 
 
 Chapel to ease the conscience of its load, 
 
 And, on the other side descending, enters 
 
 Markt Werfen on the Salzach. The sun sets, 
 
 And Night with pallid alchemy reverse, 
 
 Turns into copper first, then into lead 
 
 The golden coating of Tiroler Kopf. 
 
 It is Saint John's feast and by starlight less 
 
 Than blaze of hundred Baal fires on the hills 
 
 Werfen receives us and not cheaply lodges 
 
 In Miihlthaler's bad inn beside the Post, 
 
 And with scant supper — bread and wine and pancakes 
 
 Churlish refreshes. 
 
 Half past ten, next morning. 
 The pair of sluggards sees upon the road. 
 And, crossed and left behind the Salzach, pressing 
 Along the Achberg's flank their upward way. 
 Upward and upward still, till, cleared the comb, 
 Below them opens trending east and west 
 The Fritzthal and down hastening to the Salzach 
 Blue felspath-rolling Fritz, along whose right 
 
 ' The Postmaster in Werfen (1868) knew this mountain only by the name 
 of Tiroler Kopf. 
 
And tlien along whose left bank slow ascending, 
 
 Deep between pine-clad precipices dark, 
 
 We reach at one the hotel zur Post at Hiittau 
 
 Opposite the bare, scald, English- looking church. 
 
 And rest a while and lunch on bread and wine 
 
 And coffee with vile chicory root embittered, 
 
 Then forward up the hill between wide lawns 
 
 Blue with campanulas or with ox-eye white. 
 
 To Eben, harmless Eben, where we 're not 
 
 Even so much as bayed at by the huge 
 
 One-headed Cerberus of the hostel door: 
 
 Fearless the traveller enters as he lists. 
 
 Or fearless passes by — the dog 's 'of wood; 
 
 Sole wooden hostel dog in Germany, 
 
 Hostel dog sole in Germany who spurns 
 
 The proverb, and his teeth shows without biting. 
 
 Therefore I praise thee, Eben! and thy wooden 
 
 Cerb, in his wooden kennel with his bright 
 
 Collar of brass and heavy iron chain. 
 
 And so, without extravagant outlay 
 
 Either of valour or of circumspection, 
 
 We pass for once a German hostel door. 
 
 And have behind us Fritzthal left, and Fritz. 
 
 By the Enns watered, flanked upon the east 
 
 By Lackenkogel's sugarloaf, the upland 
 
 Valley of Flachau opens right before us ; 
 
 The issuing Enns turns east, and east our road 
 
 Turns with the issuing Enns, and on to Radstadt; 
 
 Bean fields on either side and chamomile 
 
 The air perfuming, and cerinthe minor 
 
 And eriophoron with white and yellow 
 
 The green holms speckling. Radstadt walls and fosse. 
 
 Fosse once, now sunken flower- and kitchen-garden 
 
 At six receive us, and with bed and supper 
 
 Accommodate, at Poschacher's ill served, 
 
 Dear, and not over civil, inn zur Post. 
 
 Friday, June twentysixth, at half past eight 
 We cross the Enns and up the Tauernach's 
 
Eight bank pursue our gradual sloping wixj 
 
 Southward, our day's task to ascend the Tauern 
 
 And on the further side descend to Tweng — 
 
 Pray heaven yon fleecy clouds portend not rain ! 
 
 A forester with double-barreled gun, 
 
 Cock's feather in his hat, and pouch at side. 
 
 And spaniel in his steps obsequious trotting. 
 
 Joins company, and talks of his revier 
 
 And of our journey's pleasures and displeasures. 
 
 And how above the level sea our road 
 
 To clear the Tauern mounts six thousand feet ; 
 
 Yet not within one thousand feet and forty 
 
 Mounts of the Tauern peak, high Seckar-Spitz. 
 
 "Yes, that 's a cembra pine," continued he, 
 
 "Rather a rarity among these mountains. 
 
 Aud that 's a prunus padus, rarer still. 
 
 And here 's another cembra and another." 
 
 "A noble tree 's the cembra pine," said I; 
 
 "I saw it first last year near Silva Plana 
 
 Upon the Julier, and last year first time 
 
 Sang, on my walk from Carlsruhe to Bassano, 
 
 Its sturdy Roman air of strength and greatness. 
 
 But prunus padus is my old acquaintance. 
 
 It grew at Dalkey Lodge upon the lawn 
 
 Under my nursery windows, and ofttimes 
 
 My childhood sported in the summer mornings 
 
 With its white blossoms. Ever since, I 've loved it; 
 
 To see it here in this ungenial clime. 
 
 These high, cold regions, pains me." With these words 
 
 Ended abrupt our talk, for different ways 
 
 Our paths led, to the left the forester's 
 
 To his revier, mine to our midday halt 
 
 Straight onward, at the Unter-Tauern post-house, 
 
 Where short our rest, and scanty our repast 
 
 Of bread and beer, and forth again undaunted 
 
 Under the lowering sky to breast the Tauern, 
 
 Leaving the unter-Tauernhaus to flourish 
 
 Three hundred years more where it has already 
 
 Flourished three hundred, and its portal arch 
 
Display three hundred years more on its key 
 Sculptured in effigy the wheel of Eadstadt, 
 And date and builder's name and ancestry, 
 And had we pagans been, we thus had sung: 
 
 Lord of the clouds and murky air, 
 Jupiter Pluvius, hear our prayer. 
 And graciously this livelong day 
 Come not between us and Sol's ray. 
 To other shores thy blessings send. 
 Bounteous, on other lands descend. 
 But from thy servants far away, 
 Pluvius Jupiter, keep today. 
 
 But not in Jupiter Pluvius or Serene 
 
 Was 6ur faith, or in pagan God or Christian, 
 
 But in the good barometer of our host 
 
 Of the Unter-Tauern-Haus; so neither song 
 
 Nor hymn sang we, nor heaven with prayer assailed. 
 
 "Handsome these houses, here, of whole pine trunks 
 
 Piled horizontal, one upon another," 
 
 Said I to Katharine, as we left the post house, 
 
 "With every one its gable toward the road, 
 
 And bell and belfry on the gable's apex, 
 
 And white clock-dial, like a Cyclops' eye 
 
 Glowering from underneath the prominent 
 
 Eoof angle, and, below the white clock-dial. 
 
 Flower-potted balcony the wide gable's breadth." 
 
 But Katharine minded neither white clock-dial, 
 
 Belfry, nor bell, nor pine trunks horizontal. 
 
 Nor balcony the whole breadth of the gable. 
 
 For Flora held her in a flowery leash. 
 
 Entangled neck and waist and wrist and ankle. 
 
 And with a gentle violence was pulling 
 
 Uphill along the Tauernach's right bank. 
 
 Of clematis alpina she had wreathed 
 
 And calamintha acinos, the garland. 
 
 And orange hierdcium intertwined 
 
 And white pinguicula and geranium phaeum 
 
 And chrysosplenium's unobtrusive bloom. 
 
 And single flowered erigeron and blue. 
 
Pennoned phyteuma and red sediim repens, 
 
 And rock valerian and tall meadow-rue, 
 
 And round with cuscuta's long spiral threads 
 
 Had wrapped the whole and made into a cord 
 
 As strong as it was fair and fragrant smelling. 
 
 Such wreath of redder red than her own lips, 
 
 Of whiter white than her own teeth, Europa 
 
 Twined, sportive, and threw round such willing prisoner, 
 
 That fatal day she left the Tyrian shore 
 
 For Crete, and little wotting led Jove captive. 
 
 Bound with such wreath by Chromis and Mnasylos 
 
 And Aegle, loveliest, slyest of the Naiads, 
 
 Silenus to regain his liberty 
 
 So sweetly sang his song of the creation, 
 
 Of Pyrrha, and Pasiphae, and Hylas, 
 
 And Atalanta and the golden apple, 
 
 And Gallus wandering by Permessus' stream, 
 
 That fauns and satyrs gathered round to listen 
 
 And forest oaks "waved to and fro in time. 
 
 As up the steep ravine, far off, I follow, 
 
 — The Tauernach below me on the right 
 
 Tnmbhng from rock to rock down toward the Enns, 
 
 Upon my left the Kesselwand and Hohlwand 
 
 Confining perpendicular the road 
 
 And shutting out the sky even to the zenith — 
 
 My Muse, seeing me alone, comes laughing up 
 
 And links her arm in mine and in mine ear 
 
 Sets-to a-flistering such delicious nonsense. 
 
 That I hear nothing but herself, see nothing. 
 
 Till Katharine's questions: "What kept you so long? 
 
 And isn't that Hohlwand fine below the bridge? 
 
 And weren't it worth a whole day's pilgrimage 
 
 Only to see and hear this waterfall," 
 
 Startle me, and I find myself beside her 
 
 Seated high up the left bank of the torrent, 
 
 Ojjposite a cataract whose three cascades 
 
 Consecutive fill the air with smoke and thunder. 
 
 And hang with spray, trees, rocks, and flowers all round. 
 
 But not long time is ours to rest beside 
 
And contemplate the pell-mell of the waters, 
 
 For Sol's unceasing, never tiring wheels 
 
 Have left, already one good hour and half, 
 
 Behind them the meridian, and see yonder. 
 
 How down the middle of the road the dust, 
 
 Ancient aifronts forgiven and forgotten, 
 
 Goes pirouetting with old partner Notus, 
 
 So onward once again and cross the bridge 
 
 So called, of Grace, back to the torrent's right. 
 
 And upward round the mountain's rocky spur. 
 
 Not without turning oft-reverted eye 
 
 On lofty Bischoifsmtitze far behind us 
 
 Northward, and loftier Dachstein north-north-east, 
 
 And upward still, diagonal and upward 
 
 Along the slope side of the wooded basin 
 
 On whose green level bottom, far below. 
 
 The Tauernach meanders toward the Kessel. 
 
 Stands on our left a six foot high, time furrowed, 
 
 White marble milestone of Septimius Cesar 
 
 Severus, carrying back our thoughts across 
 
 The chasm of fifteen centuries, till we hear. 
 
 And keep time with, the legionaries' tread. 
 
 Returning joyous from the Inn's cold banks 
 
 Or Danube's to the sunny hills of Tiber. 
 
 The basin's brim is cleared and higher still 
 
 Along the right of the descending torrent 
 
 Winds to the left our road. Up through the larches 
 
 Flanking th' abysm below us on our right 
 
 Floats louder now and now less loud the roar 
 
 Of the Johannis Waterfall unseen. 
 
 Following the sound we turn aside where, rubbed 
 
 By Time's hand down to scarce four foot in height, 
 
 A second stone stands of Septimius Caesar, 
 
 And from the chasm's extreme edge contemplate 
 
 The Tauernach below and opposite. 
 
 Out from the cleft rock's perpendicular face. 
 
 Gushing uproarious, and with one brave leap 
 
 Plunging, head foremost, down six hundred feet 
 
 Into its stony Nesselgraben bed. 
 
Chilly with spray the air; stock, stone, and leaf 
 
 Dripping; unsafe the slender, moss grown rail 
 
 Which balustrades, two downward steps before us. 
 
 The utmost brink. In vain the eye would follow, 
 
 Down to the bottom of its fall, the broad. 
 
 White, glancing, waving sheet of still new foam. 
 
 It disappears and to the ear alone 
 
 Sends word of its arrival; every rock 
 
 And hollow pine trunk, round, repeats the news. 
 
 We turn, and forward up the road again 
 
 Under the Hirschwand a Zigeuner group 
 
 Descending meets us, women, men and children. 
 
 All swarthy, all long - featured, black- eyed all, 
 
 And to mind bringing back — though not quite lik5 — 
 
 The dark Italian. Some, more in advance. 
 
 Have halted, and their temporary camp 
 
 Pitched in a green bay of the winding road. 
 
 One woman's cooking; one, a little younger. 
 
 Sits suckling; from the two -wheeled cart unyoked, 
 
 A man, with half bent knee, and hip joint crouching. 
 
 Stands motionless before the roadside paling. 
 
 His back turned to the road, right hand uplifted, 
 
 And bare head and bare neck stretched toward the paling. 
 
 Go not too near, disturb him not, he 's — shaving. 
 
 A broken piece of silvered glass, his mirror. 
 
 Throws the sun's image on us as we pass. 
 
 Merry come down the hill, in twos and threes. 
 
 His comrades meeting us as we ascend, 
 
 And in good German courteously sakiting. 
 
 We turn when they are passed and stand a while 
 
 After them gazing, and in vain some woi'd 
 
 Striving to gather of their unknown tongue. 
 
 Spangled the roadside grass and edged the brooks 
 
 With modest blue forget-me-not and sweet 
 
 Unostentatious cowslip and gay trollius. 
 
 And vernal gentian and marsh marigold. 
 
 And wholesome dandelion, in full bloom, 
 
 For, from the lowlands driven by tyrannous Summer, 
 
 Spring has ta' en refuge here, and holds, retired. 
 
High on the mountain side, her dewy court, 
 
 Under the white mists, and dark, dripping clouds. 
 
 Which Sol's warm ray gilds oftener than disperses. 
 
 And now ascending higher we have left 
 
 Spring and Spring's perfumed, variegated court. 
 
 And the soft dropping shower and velvet grass 
 
 And tepid slanting sunbeam, far below. 
 
 And the breeze nips us and gray mists drift fast 
 
 Along the rocky summits, and the rain 
 
 Beats in our face, and drips from our umbrellas. 
 
 And sky and clouds are blended into one 
 
 Opaque, dull, dingy mass of dirty white, 
 
 And other garniture our road has none 
 
 Than aconite napellus not yet flowered. 
 
 Or rhododendron ruddy with the cold. 
 
 Or bandy pinus pumilo, or carex. 
 
 Or luzula's lank stalk, or chamaebux. 
 
 Or Alpine soldanella's blue, fringed bell; 
 
 Or, it might be, a patch of livid purple 
 
 Silene acaulis, or a squat carline. 
 
 Or cineraria crispa scarce half blown. 
 
 Or arnica montana scarce half sized. 
 
 Or here and there a sally of so dwarf, 
 
 Lapland dimensions, that trunk, leaves, and branches 
 
 Yield scarce two mouthfuls to the browsing goat. 
 
 Or white ranunculus or veratrum album. 
 
 Malignant natures both and thriving most 
 
 Where kindlier juice and softer fibres die, 
 
 And now we 're on the highest of the pass. 
 
 The Tauernhorns amphitheatral round us, 
 
 Hirschwand and Koppen and Two Mannikins, 
 
 And Seekar, rugged all and streaked with snow: 
 
 Two hundred yards before us, on our left. 
 
 Facing the road, our part desired of refuge. 
 
 The Tauernhaus, lone, desolate and naked, 
 
 With its white walls and wooden shingle roof. 
 
 And windows so to exclude the cold contracted. 
 
 And keep the heat in, as to exclude the light 
 
 Were ever a cat's pupils: 'cross the road, 
 
Opposite the Tauernbaus, the Tauern church 
 
 Wooden, with wooden cross and wooden belfry, 
 
 And iron bell with iron tongue to call 
 
 The landlord of the Taueruhaus to church : 
 
 Close by the dreary church the dreary manse. 
 
 Pious foundation of John Wisenegger, 
 
 The Sehaidtberg's landlord in the year of grace, 
 
 One thousand and seven hundred and two score; 
 
 Beyond, upon the amphitheatre's verge. 
 
 The Tauei-nhbhe and the Tauern landlord's 
 
 Capacious thinly peopled burying ground, 
 
 Eeigned over in the midst by a Priapus 
 
 Christ on the cross, red raddled, gaunt, gigantic, 
 
 Terror to thieves, were any on the Tauern, 
 
 Or in th' enclosure anything to steal. 
 
 At half past three, tired, hungry, wet, behold us 
 
 In the grim Tauernbaus' gast-stube seated 
 
 Expectant at the bare, brown, walnut table. 
 
 Out of a clock-case in the left-hand corner. 
 
 Time's everlasting dead-march ticking dull, 
 
 A one-wicked lamp, in th' other left-hand corner, 
 
 With dismal glimmer lighting in her shrine 
 
 A Virgo beatissima soon to be 
 
 A Vii'go beatissima at once 
 
 And mater dolorosa, troubled mother. 
 
 Mother of trouble! — for from the stube's low ^ 
 
 Swart-raftered heaven, behold in act to fly 
 
 Into the lap elite the bridegroom dove. 
 
 Nay, uninitiated pagan, nay. 
 
 It 's not the repetition of thy Leda. 
 
 Blaspheme not, but bow down thy head and worship. 
 
 On our right hand the windows and the rain, 
 
 A cold stove at our backs, and, round the stove, 
 
 A rail with men-and-women's clothes hung motley ; 
 
 Against the opposite wall a kneading-trough. 
 
 And trough for washing, and huge wooden dresser. 
 
 Some half dozen wooden platters on the shelves 
 
 And twice as many quart and pint, bright shining, 
 
 Beer-glasses, with bright polished pewter lids 
 
Hinged on, and standing open and each bearing, 
 Oiii- host's initials in fair graven letters. 
 At last before us smokes upon the table 
 Th' expected scheiterhaufen, and we dine 
 Not without thoughts of Dido, and drain, each, 
 Our foaming pint of beer, then, satisfied, 
 And, as in duty bound, to Ceres, thankful, 
 And cordial, kind Gambrinus, forth again 
 Under the clearing sky at half past four, 
 And, left behind the burying-ground and cross 
 And, cleared the Tauernhohe, feel not sorry 
 That now, at long and last, the road leads downward. 
 Downward leads gradual, snowdrifts on our right 
 'And dark slate rocks white marble, on our left, 
 Coarse, dolomitic, little like the fine 
 Hard, homogeneous Carrara block 
 Or snow-white Parian; high above our heads 
 On either hand the bare cliffs thinly sprinkled 
 With stunted larch or spruce, the skyish zenith 
 Now overcast, now clear, and now, again. 
 Raining; Reaumur plus eight, roads wet, streams full. 
 And, lower down as we descend, gold-edged 
 With marigold or fringed with saracen 
 Cacaglia not yet blown, nor hoisting yet 
 Upon its slender scape its purple-red 
 Umbrellula, and heath begins to bloom 
 And primula farinosa and elatior. 
 And stalkless gentian and bavarica, 
 And bilberry, and white Idaean vine, 
 And heart-leafed globularia, gray and sad. 
 And we bid fdrewell to the last dwarf sally. 
 Deep down below us on our right, the valley 
 -Grassy and green, as, under the pine wood 
 Now thicker grown upon the heights above us, 
 We wind along the left-hand mountain flank. 
 And see and hear the torrent underneath 
 The bridge of Hoheberg dashed into foam 
 Whiter than the white marble rocks. Down still 
 Our road leads gradual, and — behind us leaving 
 
Farther and higher at each step the Tauern's 
 Bare, rugged, snow-streaked ridge, and on the left 
 Passing a pair of five-f'oot-high, time-worn 
 Gray milestone columns of "Invincible, 
 Imperial Philip, Cesar and Augustus, 
 And Tribune of the people", — lands us safe,. 
 At half past seven, in the post house at Tweng, 
 Where a veal-cutlet supper, beer, and salad. 
 And tolerable beds, and long sound sleep, 
 Leave us no word to say against the Tauern. 
 
 June Twentyseventh wears of his elder brother, 
 June Twentysixth, the fashion; clouds and rain 
 Diversified with patches here and there 
 Of sunshine and blue sky. Tweng left behind, 
 We follow on alert, at nine o'clock, 
 With the descending Tauern stream, our way; 
 Smooth polished, various colored pebbles glancing 
 Bright through the ripple, underfoot, the sward 
 Though wet, elastic; and, about us round. 
 Green barberry in full canary bloom, 
 And feathery larch the torrent's left bank clothing. 
 Not enough thick to make our path swerve often. 
 Or often from our view shut out the ripple. 
 And now we 've changed for the high road the sward. 
 And, for vast heaps of rusty iron gravel. 
 The barberry blossom pale, and feathery larch; 
 And clattering foundry hammers stun our ears. 
 And the Tauern toi-rent's busy turning wheels 
 Some under-shot some over-, and we tread 
 Crisp scoriae, and a sulfurous glow Etnaean 
 Steams in our faces as we pass the furnace, 
 And naked armed and naked legged stalks here 
 A sweating Steropes, a Brontes there, 
 A swart Pyi-acmon yonder, and sparks fly 
 In their old fashion upwards, and smoke wreaths 
 Hang in the air, and soot begrimes the portals. 
 Lovelier see now before us — on the green 
 Larch-studded knoll that toward the river crowns 
 
Th' extreme end of the spur cross which the road, 
 
 Ascending first, descends to Mauterndorf — 
 
 Mauterndorf castle with its Gothic loop-holes 
 
 And square, white, massy tower a hundred feet 
 
 And forty, high, above the courtyard pavement. 
 
 Arrived, an hour ere Sol from his meridian 
 
 Peeps through a cloudy chink on Mauterndorf, 
 
 We dine luxurious on boiled beef and salad, 
 
 And praise the landlord's year-old Styrian wine. 
 
 And provident memorandum in our tablets: 
 
 "Opposite the church. Post good in Mauterndorf." 
 
 And, rested, on again, at prick of noon, 
 
 Along a dull, monotonous road between 
 
 Flax and rye fields, these purpling, those in bell. 
 
 Not without now and then reverted eye 
 
 On Mauterndorf, and Mauterndorf's white castle 
 
 Standing forth in the sunbeams bold and fair 
 
 Against the larch-clad mountain's dark back-ground; 
 
 Nor without farewell and a pleasant journey 
 
 Waved from the bridge down to the Tauern stream 
 
 Here parting company and turning east 
 
 To join the Mur at Tamsweg; onward then 
 
 Over the Staigberg's spur, and all at once 
 
 Between the Mitteberg and Staigberg opens 
 
 The Mur's green valley trending west and east 
 
 From Saint Michafel to Tamsweg; Mosham Schloss, 
 
 Honored scarce less as Bierschenk than as Schloss, 
 
 Close at our feet; Saint Margaret's opposite. 
 
 Westward, our down-hill road ascends the Mur 
 
 To Saint Martin, where a gendarme accosts us. 
 
 In German, plainly not his mother tongue. 
 
 Though fluent spoken. He 's a Milanese 
 
 With full, dark, melting, mulberry eyes Italian, 
 
 And sallow, pompion cheeks : three years he has spent, 
 
 Three long sad years, here in this Alpine eyrie. 
 
 Out of the sound of "si si" and "buon giorno". - 
 
 Learning to chew black bread, and with long draughts 
 
 Of glutinous c6rn-wine lubricate his throat, 
 
 With ichs echs ochs and achs made sore and husky. 
 
 67 
 
I never had much sympathy with gendarmes, 
 
 Not even in old dear Dublin where they drilled me 
 
 As if they had been drill sergeants, I, a raw 
 
 Awkward recruit; and high up in the mountains 
 
 Among the cembra pines and rhododendrons 
 
 A gendarme is my horror and disgust. 
 
 What! shall not I, who to no mdn mean harm, 
 
 Who would not hurt a fly, or even so much 
 
 As brush down wantonly a spider's web, 
 
 Shall I not tread the mountain sod unquestioned? 
 
 And sleeps the Austrian Kaiser insecure 
 
 Unless by telegraph transmitted to him. 
 
 Each night before he goes to bed, my doings'? 
 
 How many miles I' ve walked to day, how many 
 
 I intend to walk tomorrow, where I Ve dined 
 
 And slept and baited, and the hour precise 
 
 I left my last night's quarter? and should ever 
 
 A doubt rise in thy mind, inquisitive reader, 
 
 Of the stern truth of all this travel's story, 
 
 Thou canst at pleasure verify names, dates. 
 
 And all the principal facts, by reference 
 
 To the imperial archives in Vienna. 
 
 I never had much sympathy with gendarmes 
 
 Yet I felt for the man and bade him kindly 
 
 "Addio!" when, arrived at Saint Michael, 
 
 He touched his cap and turned into the guardhouse. 
 
 Across the Mur our left-hand-veering road 
 
 Conducts us now, and we begin to ascend 
 
 The steep side of the Katschberg, stopping oft 
 
 To drAw breath and look back upon the valley, 
 
 Eiver, and Saint Michael, and the opposite hill 
 
 Of Pfaffenberg, renowned for its fair prospect, 
 
 And Speiereck's cloudy Spitz pyramidal. 
 
 Open our road at times, at times closed in 
 
 By larch or pine woods, never not deep furrowed 
 
 By many a crossing mountain stream oblique, 
 
 Or mountain stream's bed, and ascending ever 
 
 Steeper and more abrupt than even the Tauern, 
 
 But to less height. We 're on the top at six, 
 
And, with one stride the Lungau left behind, 
 
 Enter Carinthia, of all lands we 've travelled, 
 
 — Tor not now for the first time do our feet 
 
 The soil tread "where the rude Carinthian boor 
 
 Against the houseless traveller shuts his door" — 
 
 The least j)olite to strangers. No less steep, 
 
 No less by streams deep furrowed the descent, 
 
 No less the view, than in the ascent, shut out 
 
 By larch and pine woods and revealed alternate. 
 
 On all sides round decaying mica-schist. 
 
 Below us on the right the Polla thai 
 
 And from the Hnfner hasting down to meet us 
 
 Through the pine wood, the Lieserbach at Rennweg; 
 
 Offside the valley, rising high before us. 
 
 And closing in the prospect, the obtuse 
 
 Cone of the "Wandspitz ; on the left below us 
 
 Eennweg, not yet in view, but safely reached 
 
 At half past seven. Our lodging 's in the Poste, 
 
 Our supper, chicory, salad, veal and beer. 
 
 Our landlord's Joseph Heiss, as pope or Cesar 
 
 Potent in Eennweg, and, with pope's or Cesar's 
 
 Abhorrence of imperium in imperio. 
 
 Safe centering in himself the powers that be 
 
 In Eennweg — burgomaster sole, sole landlord. 
 
 Sole master, both of letter-post and horse-post. 
 
 Beware him, traveller — happy, if thou canst, 
 
 And need'st not even for one night trust thyself 
 
 To Eennweg's irresponsible dictator. 
 
 We need it — woe to need and ignorance! 
 
 Ignorance, bad father; Need, unhappy son. 
 
 Supper despatched, bed-chamber-candles waiting 
 
 Lit on the table, "Passports, please", said Heiss, 
 
 With outstretched arm between us and the door. 
 
 Obstructive. Even as ticket-of-leave man humbly 
 
 I'akes out and shows his ticket, I take out 
 
 And show our noble Queen Victoria's letter 
 
 Praying all foreign princes, potentates, 
 
 Thrones, dominations, virtues, her fair cousins, 
 
 To afford us two, her peaceful, loyal subjects. 
 
Free and safe passage ttrough their several realms, 
 
 Small courtesy", with like small courtesy 
 
 To be by her in similar case requited: 
 
 "Is 't not enough?" said I, seeing Heiss demur; 
 
 "Go up" said he, "leaving with me the passport." 
 
 "Your part 's to read," said I, as in my pocket 
 
 I buttoned up the document, "and object 
 
 If you find aught wrong; mine 's to keep the passport. 
 
 "How do I know," said he "but in the morning 
 
 My guest goes off at cockcrow, scot unpaid ? " 
 
 "I '11 pay you now," said I, "make out your bill," 
 
 And down upon the table laid the money. 
 
 " But there are chairs and tables, in the room. 
 
 Besides the beds and bedclothes; who secures me 
 
 To find them or my guests tomorrow morning?" 
 
 Then put a sentinel on our door," said I, 
 
 "And guard us well, for not except by force 
 
 Touchest again our passport. Good night, landlord." 
 
 "Landlord, good night", said Katharine, and both turning 
 
 Short on the heel round, took up each a light 
 
 And up to bed, leaving Heiss there surprised 
 
 And hesitating and no word heard more 
 
 Of pledge or passport, and in sound sleep, soon. 
 
 And dreams of happy home and kindly faces, 
 
 Forgot inhospitable, rude Carinthia. 
 
 At half past seven next morning Reaumur stands 
 At twelve within our chamber, from the north 
 The wind blows steady, and before it drives 
 In troops across the sky the lazy clouds. 
 Our way leads down the valley of the Lieser 
 Crossing from bank to bank oft, and recrossing; 
 Larch and pine forests clothe on either hand 
 The heights above us; granite rocks detached 
 Lie round about us; over rounded pebbles 
 Of quartz and granite rolls the clear cold stream. 
 Roofless and cracked and ruined are the walls 
 Of ancient Rauhenkatsch signorial castle 
 High on its grassy knoll upon our right. 
 
Above the Lieser out of the ravine 
 
 From behind rushing, and our downward way 
 
 Unceremonious crossing; but the bridge, 
 
 Though crazy, holds fast, and we pass secure 
 
 Where Joseph Martin Kulnigg, his imperial 
 
 And royal Highness's road engineer, 
 
 Fell with seven masons through the half finished arch, 
 
 And, by the swollen flood swept away, had perished. 
 
 But for the help, invoked upon the instant. 
 
 Of llalta chapel's Mary of all comfort. 
 
 Graved letters on the parapet preserve 
 
 Already for one hundred years less four. 
 
 The memory of the fact. Incessant raves 
 
 The Lieser at the foot of Eauhenkatsch, 
 
 Incessant echoes, opposite, the ravine's 
 
 Schistose gneiss rock, with mingled birch and larch 
 
 And dark red pine, thick wooded to the clouds. 
 
 And see on yonder weather-beaten ledge, 
 
 Above the road beyond the bridge and river. 
 
 Stands tenantless a blood-stained cross with spear 
 
 Nail-holes and leaning, ladder; underneath, 
 
 Chiselled out in the precipice's face 
 
 And by a steep stone stair accessible, 
 
 The tomb yawns transverse of a ghastly, pallid, 
 
 Full length extended, dead, white-sheeted Christ. 
 
 Sprinkled the corpse with gilly-flower and rose, 
 
 And, round the opening's sill, blooms fresh and fair. 
 
 Cared by some pious hand, a boxed-in plat 
 
 Of wall-flower, pink, and lily-of-the-valley. 
 
 Who reads unmoved the scroll upon the lintel. 
 
 Christians, come if ye love Jesus 
 And hold sacred his command, 
 From the heaven of heavens he sees us 
 Reverent kneel and kiss his hand. — ^ 
 
 Christen ! ruhrt euch Jesu liebe, 
 1st euch heilig sein geboth, 
 
 ! so kommt aus reinem triebe, 
 Kommt unJ feiert seinen tod. 
 
 SI 
 
Is of less plastic clay made than the crowd. 
 
 Downward along the Lieser, downward still 
 
 Leads on, our road, the gneiss rock on our right 
 
 Green here and there with elder racemose. 
 
 And mountain-ash in flower, and barherry; 
 
 Upon our left the torrent, overhead; 
 
 Firm on the perpendicular cliff's edge. 
 
 The village and white church of Nikolai, 
 
 Cynosure of the valley, but we turn 
 
 Forward direct our undevotional eyes 
 
 And hastening steps alert, and at Kremsbruck, 
 
 Peninsular between the Krems and Lieser, 
 
 Crossing the Lieser, first, and then the Krems, 
 
 And then the blended waters, dine at two 
 
 In Biirgermeister Kolmeyer's inn, in Gmiind, 
 
 And rest an hour, then cross the Malta bridge. 
 
 And stand by, witness of the joyful meeting 
 
 Of the two Alpine sisters undefiled, 
 
 Malta and Lieser, and, upon their journey 
 
 Down to SpitS,l to meet their cousin Drau, 
 
 Accompany as far as Lieserhofen 
 
 The united pair, not with them, hand in hand. 
 
 Leaping from rock to rock along the deep 
 
 Eavine's rough bottom, but, with even step 
 
 And sure along the smooth, fair road that crowns. 
 
 And in and out winds with the bosky brink, 
 
 And looks down from above, through birch and ash 
 
 Willow and flowering elder on the water, 
 
 And, cross the water, on the opposite bank's 
 
 Willow and birch and ash and flowering elder. 
 
 But Lieserhofen parts us from our comrades; 
 
 They toward Spitil right On; toward Lendorf we; 
 
 To the right turning at the crucifix; 
 
 Shorter our way so, by th' hypothenuse, 
 
 Than through Spitil and the sharp angle's vertex. 
 
 And we shall gr^et Drau ere she has met her cousins. 
 
 Fair spreads and wide the view from Lieserhofen, 
 
 Down the Drau valley east towards Klagenfurth 
 
 And nearer Villach, though the Drau's unseen. 
 
Unseen the Millstadt lake and town of Ifillstadt 
 Hid in the lower heights and jutting spurs 
 O'er which our eye expatiates unconfined 
 Eastward — "but what is that you Ve got there, Katharine, 
 So glossy black, soft, plump, and velvety, 
 With so great massy paws and eyes no bigger 
 Than a pin's head?" "A little mole, papa. 
 Never before this day alive by me 
 Beheld the tiny, timid, rapid miner." 
 "Let him go, Katharine, and if death's his portion. 
 For doing that which he must do or starve. 
 Let us to other hands the execution 
 Leave of fell Nature's stern, Draconian law; 
 Us he has never harmed." "And him, be sure, 
 I have no thoughts of harming," answered Katharine, 
 As, at his own door, she set free her prisoner, 
 And, sympathizing, watched his disappearance. 
 At half past six behold us facing West 
 Up the wide bottom of the great Drau valley. 
 Eight in the wind's, eye. Treeless, shrubless, hedgeless. 
 The bleak, flat, dusty road; maize on our right. 
 Upon our left hand, maize; unseen, beyond 
 The left hand, maize; the river cuddling in 
 Close to the southern mountain's barren base. 
 Black, black the sky to the southwest before us, 
 And, from the mountain flank on which it lowers. 
 Not by unpractised eye to be distinguished. 
 Under that heavy, leaden, lowering sky, 
 Behind that mountain's spur, lies Sachsenburg, 
 Our three-miles-distant refuge for the night. 
 And we must turn oblique from the northwest 
 And setting sun, in state, and Moll's bright valley. 
 Desolate jMollbrticken village; clear and cold 
 From the Great Glockner and Pasterzen-Kees 
 Under its wooden bridge flows down the JloU, 
 And seeks the Drau out hid behind the maize. 
 Coy as a maid who nought will hear of marriage. 
 'Our way to Sachsenburg both rivers crosses 
 And the acute peninsula between. 
 
And in Kapeller's inn and bakery- 
 Lodges us safe for supper and the night, 
 And the dark, leaden, lowering sky may now 
 Descend in rain or clear up, as it likes. 
 
 Saint Peter and Saint Paul a windy day 
 Have for their festival, June twentyuinth, 
 And Notus in our face his heavy wings 
 riaps disrespectful, as, at ten o'clock. 
 We cross from Sachsenburg the wooden bridge 
 And up the left bank of the Drau press, lively, 
 Through the pine wood, where, of its honors shorn, 
 Each once majestic pine no worthier shows 
 Than a lank maypole or pyramidal poplar. 
 But need's no less imperious than sharp witted 
 And where to bed the cattle there's no straw, 
 Or little, the pine bough must serve the purpose : 
 Nor to the Goddess of the turret crown 
 Let the fate hard seem of her protegee ; 
 Have not philosophers' and poets' pages 
 And the historian's hard wrought, learned volumes 
 Heated the public baths and baking ovens 
 Of mighty Alexander's famous city ? 
 Who 'd tread the dusty road when at his side 
 A grassy path runs parallel, strewed with fern 
 And pungent juniper and ripe strawberries? 
 And now our way grows swampy, and green frogs 
 Plash from beside our feet into the water, 
 And blue libellulas with expanded wings 
 Flitting before us, challenge to give chase. 
 But we prefer a less fugacious game. 
 And cull, at every step, some painted blue 
 Or red recruit, or yellow, for our nosegay, 
 Sanguine anchusa, mullein tall and stately. 
 Soft eriophoron, and forget-me-not, 
 And fragrant-blossoming elder, and spiraea. 
 And tunica saxifraga, and humble 
 Roadside convolvulus, and wholesome mallow. 
 And barberry's green leaf and yet green berries, 
 
And chicory here first in flower this journey — 
 
 Cheap and vile counterfeit of the Arab berry, — 
 
 And broad-disked daisy and chrysanthemum 
 
 Emulous of Juno's full, resplendent eye, 
 
 And lychnis pink and lychnis white, and carex; 
 
 And purple centaury, and woodbine yellow 
 
 And garnish all round with red blushing roses. 
 
 And with green pteris aquilina sheathe 
 
 And bind with bindweed ; fairer nosegay never 
 
 Laid Flora's votary at her goddess' feet. 
 
 In and out with the mountain's bays our road 
 
 Winding ascends along the Drau's left bank. 
 
 And not unfrequently in sheltered nook 
 
 The sunny sward to sit and rest invites us 
 
 Not loath, for sick and weak, to day, my comrade, 
 
 All other days so lively, strong, and active, 
 
 And than myself more patient of the way's 
 
 Manifold hardships: nor, dearest Katharine, ever 
 
 Till I 've forgotten thee and thy not soon 
 
 To be forgotten mother, shall my heart 
 
 Or tongue or pen subscribe the narrow creed 
 
 That woman is a creature less than man 
 
 Endowed with fortitude and perseverance — 
 
 "Less strong, sir poet," to be sure, less strong. 
 
 But not inferior therefore, unless man's 
 
 Inferior to the ox. "Less rational" — 
 
 Be it so, reasoner, whom unreasoning woman 
 
 Circumvents at her pleasure. Salomon, Sampson, 
 
 Coriolanus, witness. True that Juno 
 
 Hearkened sometimes to Jove, but Jove himself. 
 
 With all his thunders and with all his oaths, 
 
 What was he but the minister most humble 
 
 Of the weird sisters' all-ordaining will? 
 
 But let that pass, for, breasting us, behold 
 
 Th' accumulated gravel broad and high 
 
 Which Steinfeld torrent, in long lapse of ages, 
 
 Has carried with it from the mountain down. 
 
 And spread out for its own hard pebbly bed. 
 
 Oblique, as if to spare my comrade's strength. 
 
Our road ascends, and on the other side 
 
 Oblique descends to Steinfeld where, at three, 
 
 In the new-wirth's inn — first house on the left — 
 
 Premature stopping for the day, we dine 
 
 And the long evening lounge, then sup and sleep. 
 
 Tuesday, June thirtieth, Eeaumur in our chamber 
 Stands at eighteen; outside the wind blows fresh 
 Down the Drau valley; clear the sky of clouds. 
 And of clouds clear our minds, and to Hygeia 
 For a long night's sound sleep, restorative 
 Of health to Katharine, to us both of strength, — 
 Both of us thankful. Bless us still, Hygeia, 
 Thou who alone mak'st life a gift worth having 
 Even to the immortals, thou of Gods above 
 And Gods below and men held in like honor. 
 At ten we 're on the road, green wheat all round us. 
 Barley in ear, and long rye turning yellow. 
 And flax in bell, and beans the air perfuming. 
 And stately, tall, green maize, and purple flowering 
 Lurid potato. Noon beholds us scaling 
 With longer stride and firmer foot to day 
 The Knopnitz delta up to Greifenburg 
 High on its eastern glacis, crossing then 
 The Knopnitz torrent proud to have for its own 
 Sole use and profit, like the Persian despot. 
 Lowered the mountain and the valley raised, 
 Then down the western delta flank descending 
 Into the midst of pear and apple orchards. 
 Walnut and cherry and white-flowering elder 
 Balsamic, and blue linten fields, sweet contrast 
 To the gray," barren, gravelly delta's waste. 
 Carinthian women comely-featured, tall. 
 And well proportioned, in blue cotton skirts 
 And sleeveless bodices and white shift sleeves. 
 And ruddy arms bare from the elbow, meet us, 
 Carrying rakes on their shoulders ; and the gay 
 Song of haymakers and fresh smell of hay 
 Greet us right hand and left. And now again 
 
Ascent laborious of another delta 
 
 Bearing its parent torrent on its shoulders — ^ 
 
 Aeneas-like, — gigantic, aboriginal 
 
 Pine-studded aqueduct of granite pebbles 
 
 And quartz and mica-schist. And on the left, 
 
 Drau, hid since Greifenburg, comes into view. 
 
 And wooden bridge across; and winter snow 
 
 Lies pale and ghastly in the southern mountains' 
 
 Cold, sunless, joyless, dolomitic clefts. 
 
 Berg on the right passed on its slope above us 
 
 And, on the left, a rustic roadside scroll 
 
 Showing how, on his home return to Linth, 
 
 John Winkler on this spot fell from his cart, 
 
 And underneath the heavy laden wheel 
 
 Ended, abrupt, his earthly joys and sorrows. 
 
 You see him there face downward in the dust. 
 
 The wheel upon his neck and, from the clouds 
 
 Pitiful looking down, the maiden blest. 
 
 Midway, the disembodied soul flies upward. 
 
 As like John Winkler as a twin to his brother. 
 
 Or photograph or waxwork to the model. 
 
 Dellach at three, and lunch of bread and wine. 
 
 And half an hour's rest, and some human pity 
 
 For a Hungarian traveller on his way 
 
 To native Arad from the eternal city. 
 
 He tired, poor lad! of clarifying sugar 
 
 All the long day in Arad, and broke bounds, i 
 
 And breathed with joy, a roving journeyman. 
 
 New air in Frankfort on the Main and Hamburg, 
 
 And crossed the sea from Cette, and from Jerusalem 
 
 The desert, to the Babylonian frontier, 
 
 And has made sugarcandy in Grand Cairo. 
 
 And now, his father dead, there 's waiting for him 
 
 In Arad, he doubts not (who doubts at twenty?) 
 
 His patrimony of six thousand florins 
 
 And his pale cheek glows red, and dark eye glistens 
 
 As he counts up how many days to Arad. 
 
 Ritterdorf's roadside hostel greets us next. 
 
 And by a Turk's head, pipe in mouth, surmounted 
 
A fountain opposite and grassy seat, 
 And merry group of damsels Tyrotese, 
 The cool enjoying of a flowering linden's 
 Sacred, wide spreading, odoriferous shade. 
 And red-lead painted, twenty-foot-high cross, 
 With all its grisly garniture, nails, thorns, 
 Spear, hammer, pincers, ladder, sponge and cock. 
 And grim, dead God. Another delta then, 
 Torrent and alders ; and, as we descend. 
 Some stately onopordons, whether native 
 Or from a garden strayed, no vulgar race. 
 High on the mountain's breast, beyond the river. 
 We leave behind conspicuous Schloss Stein 
 And its white chapel, and in Ober-Drauburg 
 Halt at the Ober-lieutenant's for the night, 
 Sure of good quarters and a kind reception 
 From our old friend the landlord of the Ebssle ; 
 And from our windows hear the rush of Drau. 
 
 Sound sleepers may be robbed anights; we weren't: 
 Sound though we slept last night; or, still worse case, 
 Wake, as we woke this morning, to be told 
 How by a few short hours we have missed the rarest 
 Of high Heaven's condescensions to low man, 
 Ocular demonstration of a miracle ; 
 Fur the All-Wise, at long and last deferring 
 To Ober-Drauburg's prayers and reclamations, 
 Changed hand, last night, and to his ill-considered, , 
 Untimely drought an end put with a shower, 
 And now all's right again in Ober-Drauburg, 
 And votes of thanks were passed last night at midnight, 
 And churchbells rung, and deputation sent 
 Of priests and notables to Maria Hilf, 
 Acknowledging the favor, and for ever 
 Vowing adhesion to a government ^ 
 
 Wise in its very nature and unerring; 
 Yet not the less on that account disjDOsed 
 To listen to and square its conduct by 
 The will and pleasure of its erring subjects; 
 
Let it but be respectfully expressed, 
 
 And urged home with unduubting faith and fervor. 
 
 But when we wake next morning, if we Ve missed 
 
 The demonstration, we Ve at least not missed 
 
 The miracle's self; it rains on Oberdrauburg 
 
 With such miraculous rain as upon us 
 
 It lias rained every day since w6 left Salzburg. 
 
 By the blue sky assured, at half past twelve. 
 
 That, their turn served, the Oberdrauburgers 
 
 Have sent the deity about his business. 
 
 We pack up, bid good bye, and to the road 
 
 Between pyramidal poplars; on our right. 
 
 High on the Alpine hip, the castle gray 
 
 Of Rosenberg ; Maria Hilf beyond. 
 
 White iu the sheltered nook; upon the left 
 
 The Drau, irreverent, carrying to the sea 
 
 The miracle of last night. Behind us lie 
 
 At two p. m. the frontier of Tirol, 
 
 And Nikolsdorf, first town, and on our view 
 
 Opens the fair wide basin of Lienz, 
 
 Eendez-vous joyful of the mountain nymphs 
 
 Isel and Drau, that from the Dreiherrnspitz 
 
 And Great Veuediger's everlasting ice. 
 
 This from green Toblach's watershed descending. 
 
 Dolomite peaks upon the south keep guard, 
 
 Lasertzwand and Hochkempen and Spitzkofel 
 
 And high Hochstadl, bleakest of the Unholde. 
 
 Miraschist Schleinitz opposite rears high 
 
 Toward the northwest his barrier, on the east 
 
 And just behind us left, stands sentinel 
 
 Ridged Ziethen and looks westward toward Lionz, 
 
 Close at the Schlossberg's foot peninsular 
 
 Between the valleys of the Drau and Isel. 
 
 South, on the basin's lower, inner inn. 
 
 Lias Rauchkofel's wooded pyramid. 
 
 And the Kirschbaumeralp to botanists dear. 
 
 And Zabarott's shapeless lump, upon the north 
 
 And our right hand, the prospect shutting in 
 
 And turning rude the back upon the Aloelthal 
 
And Boreas' proffered kisses, Iselberg, 
 
 Zetterfeldberg, the Stronacher, and Gaimberg, 
 
 With all their deltas, torrents, and ravines, 
 
 Green, smiling, velvet slopes and rough plush forests. 
 
 And wooden houses, separate or in groups, 
 
 And churches raising high to heaven the honored, 
 
 Never enough to be respected, cross. 
 
 Gravelly and rough the field each side the road. 
 
 The short coarse grass with mountain clover sprinkled, 
 
 And carex ampullacea always near 
 
 The stream's side and white sedum on the wall. 
 
 And, sti'ange contrasting with marschantia's brown 
 
 Glutinous blotch, the delicate canary 
 
 Blossom of hieracium pilosella 
 
 And blood stained orobanche battens on 
 
 Spicy-breathed thymian's root; and hare-bell droops 
 
 Modest, and with gauze net, compassionate. 
 
 Pea-green selaginella clothes the ground. 
 
 And not alone shrub barberry, Tirol's 
 
 Dearest, most cherished child, adorns the deltas, 
 
 But stateliest verbascum mingles there 
 
 Its yellow blossom with stramonium's white, 
 
 And dulcamara round the alder's branch 
 
 Swings herself pliant, and solanum swart 
 
 Sides himself conscious in the shade behind. 
 
 Passed on the right the Wirthshaus zum Capaun 
 
 And Dolsach church and village, and the road 
 
 Thrice by us trod in old times, three years since, 
 
 Descending from the Glockner to Lienz, 
 
 What time we crossed, without or path or guide, 
 
 In ten long hours, the lofty Fuscher-Tauern, 
 
 Feat hardly by the sane to be attempted ; 
 
 And five years since, when by this Pusterthal 
 
 Taking our way from Milan to Vienna 
 
 We turned aside and slept one night at Dolsach — ■ 
 
 And passed upon the left the holms where pines, 
 
 Torn from its Alpine home by summer floods. 
 
 And forced to colonis^e a soil ungenial. 
 
 The noble edelraute, and — far ofi' 
 
In the Lasertzwaud's shade beyond the Drau ^- 
 
 The hill of Lavant passed, upon the left, 
 
 "With its two churches, Peter's-and-Saint-Paul's 
 
 High on the summit, half way up Saint Ulrich's, 
 
 Both sacred, but Saint Ulrich's sacred most, 
 
 Shrine of the Virgin who in glory here 
 
 Appeared not to the shepherds but the sheep, 
 
 And by the whole flock, wedder, ewe, and ram. 
 
 On bended knee, was worshipped. Passed at last 
 
 The old dismantled bildstockl and hand 
 
 Gracious uplifted in the act to bless, 
 
 And crossed the Isel bridge, and left behind 
 
 The wretch's last sad refuge, the spit^l. 
 
 We reach Lienz at four and in the Post, 
 
 Often before tried and found never wanting, 
 
 Put up, and from our windows, pleased, look out 
 
 Upon the sun-lit platz and the Lienzers, 
 
 And Liebburg Schloss, Lienzer court house now. 
 
 More than three hundred years ago the proud 
 
 Eesidence baronial of the Wolkenstein 
 
 Eodeneck, Freiherrn of the Drau and Isel, 
 
 After Graf Leonhard, the last earl of Gortz, 
 
 Had for red marble tomb in Saint Andrae . 
 
 Exchanged Schloss Bruck, and, for a heavenly crown. 
 
 The lordship of the Drauthal and the Isel. 
 
 Two days pass lightfoot by, whilst, in old Loncium 
 — Roman post-station once upon the route 
 From Aquileia to the Bridge of Oenus — 
 We wait until the weather, put about 
 By th' Oberdrauburg miracle, has resumed 
 Temper, and pharmacopolist Franz Keil 
 Collated our Beaumur with the exact one 
 Of the barometer sent him from Vienna 
 For his new reckoning of the Glockner's inches, 
 And given us lessons in the Drauthal flora 
 Each evening and each morning, and excursion 
 Botanical made with us to Schloss Bruck 
 And Leopoldsrnhe, and we have spent two hours 
 
In admiration of liis isohypsisli 
 
 Drawings, and plaster model of the Glockner, 
 
 All with his own hands measured, drawn, and colored ; 
 
 Nor deign we not, though heretics, a visit 
 
 To the Madonna of the Heimsuchung, 
 
 Less, the plain truth to tell, out of devotion 
 
 Than to see Dusi's famous altarpiece 
 
 And hear the fair Dominicans sing vespers, 
 
 We the sole auditors, if you except 
 
 Saint Horian's statue on the Grospel side. 
 
 And on the Epistle's, holy Nepomuck's, 
 
 And, in the clouds, above the vaulted roof, 
 
 Such Gods and angels as have time to listen, 
 
 And ears have for plain vocal do re mi, 
 
 Unhelped by organ, lute, or even a whistle. 
 
 The church of Saint Andrae, beyond the Isel, 
 
 Beguiles us of an hour, too, with 'ts red sculptured 
 
 Leonhard last Earl of Gorz, i and Gothic porch — 
 
 And Lombard — lions they may be or griffons — 
 
 And flowering linden tall — of pyramids 
 
 GracefuUest — and snug pfarrhof alongside. 
 
 And so, almost before we are aware. 
 Comes the third day, all shining bright and glowing. 
 And not one cloud deforms the Schleinitz Spitz, 
 Or of its full nine thousand feet and nine 
 Abates one inch. At ten, our luggage packed 
 And sent to await us at Conegliano, 
 And letters posted for our Carlsruhe friends, 
 Chronicling faithful all our roadside marvels, 
 We bid good bye, and take across the fields 
 The path to Leisach, on our left the Drau, 
 Upon our right above our heads the bowers 
 And baths and mineral springs of Leopoldsruhe. 
 Except our foot-tread and the rush of Drau, 
 
 1 Leonhard last Earl of Gorz is on the left immediately after you enter the 
 church. Wolkenstcin and his wife in similar red marble on right, directly opposite 
 him. Since our former visit both monuments have been removed from the Presby- 
 tery to this situation where they arc in the dark and escape observation. J. H. 18G5. 
 
In tlie Lienzer Pass no siiimd is heard, 
 
 Where eight and forty years ago ~ come winter — 
 
 Every scaur, either side the road, re-echoed. 
 
 And every bush, the Pusterthaler's rifle, 
 
 And every echo was a Frenchman's knell. 
 
 The Auerwirth with dinner entertains us 
 
 At half past one, and shows us in the Au 
 
 The tablet on the spot raised where young Jacob 
 
 Vergeimer from his horse fell on the seventh 
 
 September, forty nine, and, dying sudden, 
 
 Went straight to heaven without paraphernalia, 
 
 Defrauding church and college of their dues. 
 
 And licensed neither by red gown nor surplice. 
 
 "Ah, wretched!" said the Auerwirth, meaning, wretched. 
 
 To die without being shrived; "alas, most wretched!" 
 
 We answered, meaning to put faith in shriving. 
 
 And no less from the truth far, than the Auerwirth, 
 
 For, lo! enthroned in clouds heaven's maiden queen 
 
 — How different maiden queen from England's Bess, 
 Of how much less inflexible hard heart. 
 
 Bear witness thou, sweet Bethlehem innocent — 
 Baby in lap, and gold crown on her head, 
 
 — I quote the right hand corner of the picture. 
 For who not sees the fact must with the next 
 Best evidence content him — stretches forth 
 
 Her right hand towards Vergheimer, bids him welcome, 
 
 And take his seat within the blest purlieus. 
 
 Near, but not in, the first row of the saints. 
 
 Near, but not in, the full light of th' Eternal. 
 
 Mittewald post-house left behind and crossed. 
 
 To the right bank, the Drau, and to the left 
 
 Eecrossed beyond the pine wood, we ascend, 
 
 And on the other side descend, while Drau 
 
 Goes round about Abfalterbach's steep hill, 
 
 Between flax fields in bell and black-eyed bean. 
 
 And 16ng rye, blighted by the frosty night 
 
 Of June fifteenth: we spent that night in Winzer, 
 
 Header, thou mayst remember, and, next morning. 
 
 Saw every blade hoar with the fatal spar. 
 
And not alone in high Abfalterbach 
 
 But wide through North Tirhl and all Cariuthia, 
 
 To day, July the fourth, the premature 
 
 Despairing sickle reaps the earless straw, 
 
 And winter's wind shall pipe through empty garners. 
 
 Time was when neither Drau went round about, 
 
 Nor traveller up and down, the delta steep 
 
 West of the village of Abfalterbach, 
 
 But both went friendly side by side along 
 
 The straight and level bottom, not as yet 
 
 Had Messa lake broke barrier and borne down 
 
 Into the bottom, Messa and Messaners, 
 
 And half the faithless clay-slate mountain side ; 
 
 And Strassen was not yet, nor Strassen church. 
 
 Nor the flax fields, or rye, or black-eyed bean. 
 
 Poppy, or buskined buckwheat, which to day 
 
 Flank our ascending and descending road 
 
 Over the delta of Abfalterbach. 
 
 And now alongside overflowing Drau's 
 
 Half-reclaimed marsh, our road runs level on 
 
 Under the right-hand steeps to Panzendorf 
 
 And Heimfels castle beetling overhead, 
 
 Villgraten torrent rushing noisy by. 
 
 And, crossed the covered bridge, at Sillian lands us 
 
 Safe in the comfortable Post at seven. 
 
 The landlord recognizes us, we sup 
 
 On soup, wine, omelet, apricots, and cherries. 
 
 And soundly sleep, and wake betimes, next morning. 
 
 Out of dim visions philological 
 
 Of Heimfels, Heunfels, Hunnenfels and Hun, 
 
 And loop-holed stones inserted in tower walls 
 
 To admit the light and let the arrow out. 
 
 Or, maybe, it is Cynthia's beam pours in 
 
 Upon some sleeping, pious, Hun Eneas, 
 
 Showing him, face and ribboned hair revealed, 
 
 His Hun Penates at his bedside standing. 
 
 And warning not to settle ,on the Drau, 
 
 But up and take them with him to Friuli — 
 
 And sweat, outbursting, proves it is no dream. 
 
And then, our vision changing, giant Hano 
 
 Of Toblach brandishes the bloody rib, 
 
 And Heimfels changes masters, and we awake 
 
 In Silian post house and, look out on Heimfels' 
 
 Keep and embattled wall and loop-holed towers 
 
 Crowning the steep, dark rock, and, what though gray, 
 
 Time worn and wrinkled, showing fresh and fair 
 
 In the new risen sun's all enlivening ray. 
 
 Nor without all respect do we salute 
 
 On the same rock watch-keeping, by the same 
 
 Impartial beam beneficent illumined. 
 
 Lying Saint Peter's church, and, in the shade. 
 
 Saint Antony's below, and Panzendorf, 
 
 And the Villgraten torrent rushing by 
 
 Under the covered bridge to join the Drau 
 
 Down in the bottom posting to the Euxine. 
 
 Sunday, July the fifth, at half past nine 
 We 're on the road, Reaumur at plus thirteen. 
 The sky without a cloud, the weather settled, 
 Silian behind us eastward, to the west 
 The upper Pusterthal before us rising. 
 Peasants, from Silian's morning mass returning, 
 Keep pace beside us and the road enliven, 
 And eye us no less curious than we them. 
 The men wear green cloth jackets and a green 
 Cock's feather in their conical green hat. 
 Green worsted girths outside the vest suspend 
 Black cotton-velvet breeches, at the knee 
 Unbuttoned, and below the knee exposing 
 Above the gartered stocking the tawn skin: 
 Shod with laced leather boots the feet and ankles ; 
 The brawny calf distends the snow white stocking, 
 A leathern girdle broadening to the front 
 Narrowing behind, and with split peacock quill 
 Gaily embroidered, in the midst displays 
 Th' imperial eagle, or the wearers' name, 
 A ge)iis, or other rural coat of arms. 
 The women's similar conical felt hat 
 
Instead of feather bears a gold lace band, 
 
 And gold-lace tassel. Of black cloth the gown 
 
 Long sleeved, short waisted, tight at wrist and shoulder. 
 
 Wide at the elbow; the deep-plaited skirt 
 
 Too short to hide the polished shoe's rosette, 
 
 Or clocks of the white stocking, far too short 
 
 To tether in the mountain maiden's step, 
 
 And in Tir<51 domesticate the scuttle. 
 
 Triangular, behind, between the shoulders 
 
 Pinned neatly with one pin, with two before, 
 
 A many-colored, fringed silk-handkerchief, 
 
 And, crossed upon the breast, discovers bare 
 
 The neck in front, and spotless white shift hem, 
 
 And cross of gold and manifold gold chain. 
 
 Add to the older women gray hairs, wrinkles. 
 
 And rosaries, plump red cheeks to the younger, 
 
 Prayerbooks to all, white handkerchiefs in hand, 
 
 And in groups mix them, six or seven together. 
 
 Women and men, all seemly and decorous. 
 
 All going our way, all from church returning, 
 
 Under the blue sky, on the bright white road. 
 
 Up the right bank of the descending Drau, 
 
 Corn-harps on either hand and barberry bushes, 
 
 With here and there a tall larch intermixed, 
 
 A straggler from th' innumerable host 
 
 Encamped with outspread waving banners green 
 
 Upon the Helmberg's side, that on our left 
 
 To the sky rising slope shuts out the south. 
 
 And you 've the picture I 'd fain set before you. 
 
 Group after group drops off, each at its own 
 
 Familiar, well- trod turning, and we 're left 
 
 To follow on, alone, our upward way 
 
 To Untervierschach, where, beside the well, 
 
 With odoriferous horse-mint bordered round, 
 
 And yellow trollius and forget-me-not 
 
 And brightest eyebright, pansy and pariiassia. 
 
 We sit a while upon the wooden bench 
 
 And drink the cool, clear water, and with sad 
 
 And unavailing pity hear the splash 
 
Of the poor prisoners in the iron-clamped, 
 
 Padlocked vivarium, and, ashamed, reflect 
 
 On the atrocious uses to which man 
 
 Turns his superior intellectual power. 
 
 And domineers, the tyrant of creation. 
 
 On still, between the Drau upon our right, 
 
 And clay-slate Helmberg's thickly pine-clad side. 
 
 To where aloft upon its rugged knoll 
 
 The church of Upper Vierschach to the clouds 
 
 Points temerarious, tempting high heaven's wrath. 
 
 And over Helmberg's side low sunken now 
 
 Into an humble spur stand full in view, 
 
 Dark underneath the overhanging sun, 
 
 Innerfeldkofel's dolomitic mass 
 
 — Bitopped Tirol Parnassus, should the muse 
 Seek ever a Parnassus in Tirbl — 
 
 And the saw teeth of mightier Zwolfer-Kofel, 
 
 And the dark, fringing pine woods underneath. 
 
 Patches of snow in the ravines declare 
 
 Winter reigns there secure even in July. 
 
 In Innichen at one we lunch on soup 
 
 And bread and wine, and — delicacy here. 
 
 Thirty five hundred feet above the sea — 
 
 A pound of ripe, red cherries. Forth at two, 
 
 And Innichen's Black Bear behind us left. 
 
 And Landlord Tagger, and Saint Michael's church, 
 
 And good Saint Candid's bones in the Stiftskirche 
 
 — Payment in kind's fair payment, and saint's bones 
 No ill devised return for saint's belief. 
 
 And no one knew this better than pope Hadrian, 
 Nor many worse than Innichen's devout — 
 And, cast a parting look upon the site, 
 No more now than the site, of wealthy, old, 
 Roman Aguntum — see us toiling up 
 The grassy, green, irriguous watershed. 
 Which from the near Eienz and Adriatic, 
 Towards the far Danube, turns away, and Euxine, 
 The Drau's stream in the Rohrwaldberg just born, 
 And little of this wicked world's ways wotting. 
 
Hid jealously as Nile's, the springs of Drau, 
 
 High on the mountain's side among the larch. 
 
 We see and hear the scanty, trickling stream. 
 
 As from the region of the clouds descending, 
 
 But leave the task to Trinker to climb up 
 
 Some ten years hence, and vaunt himself discoverer 
 
 Of the then iirst discovered springs of Drau. 
 
 And now we 've reached at last the tall, red cross. 
 
 Which on. the watershed conspicuous 
 
 Looms to both valleys, and Eienz invites us 
 
 Down with him westward to episcopal 
 
 Brixen, and Brenner's foot, and deep broad Adige; 
 
 But we, by all his promises uuallured, 
 
 Turn south the path up he has just come down, 
 
 Directest path to Italy and the vine. 
 
 Come with us, reader, lover of the vine. 
 
 Come with us, lover of unclouded skies, 
 
 And learn it 's not form but bright light which makes 
 
 Italy beautiful and shames the north. 
 
 Beautiful no less than the south in form. 
 
 But treated as a stepchild by the sun. 
 
 Up, up the valley southward, up Rienz's 
 
 Descending stream along the bright, white road, 
 
 Where 's by the dolomite precipices left 
 
 Scarce space sufficient for the Toblaoh tarn, 
 
 And fringing pinus pumilo and larch. 
 
 And the Rienz, and us, and bright, white road. 
 
 Not without tinge perceptible of green 
 
 The crystal of ferruginous Rienz, 
 
 Nor with brown rust unstained the dolomite 
 
 Pillows and bolsters of his oft-made bed. 
 
 Gray dolomitic peaks on either side 
 
 To the sky towering and, by hunter's foot 
 
 Or nimbler chamois, if ascended ever, 
 
 Ascended rarely, guard both road and river. 
 
 And on the traveller threatningly look down. 
 
 Welcome appears in view at half past six 
 
 The lonely inn of Landro, our night quarters, 
 
 Not for the first time now found hospitable, 
 
And, rarer virtue, honest. Early supper. 
 Bed early, and sound sleep, and we awake 
 Alert next morning to pursue our journey. 
 
 Up the Rienz still in the gorge's bottom 
 Under the blue sky of July the sixth, 
 Our smooth road of white dazzling dolomite 
 Between the fringing larch invites us on, 
 Oft chiding our improvident delay, 
 Now to see cloudless, high Drei Zinnen Spitz, 
 Now to see blended Diirrensee's Rienz 
 With the Rienz of high Drei Zinnen Spitz. 
 Nor these our only loiterings, for behold, 
 Darkening our eastern sun, green Hohe Aim, 
 And in black shadow in the Durren lake's 
 Transparent ripple riding, and see there, 
 Monte Piano and the rustic inn 
 Of Schluderbach, and to the east away. 
 The peaks Cadini, and we 've reached at last 
 The summit of the pass, and great Cristallo 
 Looks down upon us from our southern zenith, 
 As we stand reverent at the cross's foot, 
 Under the flaming brow of Croda Rossa^, 
 Northward; but not stand long; some lemon thyme, 
 And blue phyteuma, gathered, and gnaphalium, 
 And dryas octopetala, and one blushing 
 Red rhododendron, and two yellow poppies, 
 We 're on our downward way toward Peutelstein, 
 Terror no longer now to the Tirbl, 
 Fortress no longer now of Adria's consort. 
 High on its isolated rock it stands. 
 The owl's nest and the adder's, in and out 
 The bat flits through its windows, and each time 
 The withering ivy polype looses hold, 
 A stone plumps heavy down into th' abysm. 
 We leave the road to swing in long zigzags 
 Backward and forward on the castle's right 
 
 Germ. Hohe Gaisl. 
 
Down to tlie Boite, ' and ourselves the shorter 
 
 Precipitous path take on the castle's left 
 
 Through the pine wood, and 'cross the insecure, 
 
 Tottering foot-bridge, and with the tumbling torrent 
 
 Down the deep splintered, rocky, rough ravine, 
 
 Into the Boite valley, to the rock's 
 
 And castle's southward, where the Boite meets us 
 
 Side by side trending due south with the road. 
 
 And we have turned our backs on Peutelstein. 
 
 From time to time, as we descend the valley. 
 
 Our upturned eyes reverted seek its dark 
 
 Towering profile, against the blue sky, first, 
 
 Later against the background of the mountains. 
 
 And now we exchange — obliging so our patient 
 
 Laborious indefatigable feet 
 
 And dazzled eyes — the dusty, gravelly, new, 
 
 For the green moss-grown, old road, parallel. 
 
 Weighty the air with odours-, here the rape. 
 
 There the delicious bean; and trollius sows 
 
 With golden globes the meadow, and spiraea 
 
 Blooms aromatic on the ditch's slope. 
 
 And stately heracleum to the full 
 
 Expands its rugged leaves and umbels white, 
 
 And cirsium eriophorum, not yet blown. 
 
 Brings to our minds back high Pregratten-thal, 
 
 Windisch Matrey, and Virgen, and the great, 
 
 Snowy Venediger's pretorian tent 
 
 Girt round with precipices, clouds, and gletschers; 
 
 And, on our guide's most uncomplaining shoulders, 
 
 Canny beside our wallets slung our cirsium 
 
 — Noli me tangere — eriophorum thyrse. 
 
 At half past one Cortina di Omperzo 
 
 With no mean hospitality receives us. 
 
 Rests, but not long detains; nor turn we now. 
 
 As erst, our devious steps capricious westward 
 
 Into the mountains of Livinallongo, 
 
 ' Sign. E. Jauer found the name written Tuiite in two goograpliical worh: 
 but could not ascertain or even guess its gender. May, 1867. 
 
In order to salute at Primiero 
 
 Our once good friend, il Giudice Negrelli. 
 
 Times have changed face since then, and with the times 
 
 What is't not changes? Whiter now my hair, 
 
 Stiffer my joints, my heart less warm and trusting. 
 
 And I love friends by just so much the less, 
 
 As three years changes have made clear to me 
 
 How much three years ago I over-rated 
 
 The stock to my account in friendship's bank : 
 
 And even were I less changed, mind and body, 
 
 And still at Primiero — not removed 
 
 To Mori — my good friend il Giudice, 
 
 And with these changing three years changed as little. 
 
 Still I 'd look twice now ere I 'd plunge, as then, 
 
 Into the mountains of Livinallongo 
 
 And Paneveggio and San Martin, 
 
 Without a road, without a guide, and scarce 
 
 With even a shed to shelter me a-nights 
 
 Against Jove Pluvius descending oft 
 
 In fire and thunder from the aerial Croda 
 
 Di Janis. 
 
 So right southward on, ahead, 
 The Boite faithful, on the right below us. 
 Along the rugged base of Malcuore 
 High on our left, and through the Scotch-fir wood, 
 And past the roadside chapel on the right 
 Above the Boite's bank and Chiapuzza, 
 Where kindly from a shower nine months ago 
 The Virgin sheltered us returning northward 
 From old Bassano and our last year's journey; 
 And, crossed the Italian frontier, ^ reach at six 
 San Vito the first town, and sup and sleep 
 Under Malcuore, on the Boite's bank 
 Opposite the giant heights of Croda Pelmo. 
 
 Mountains have fallen a-nights and in their ruins 
 Buried whole villages, but none on us 
 
 1 In the pine wood, two miles north of Chiapuzza (or qu; S. Vito). 
 
 81 
 
Fell Mst night, and we slept safe and undoubting 
 
 Even at thy foot, treacherous Malcuore, 
 
 Who in one night o'erwhelmed'st in one grave 
 
 — It 's twenty years ago come Martinmas — 
 
 All Taulen's sleeping souls and Marceana's. 
 
 We sleep safe, and awake safe, and the graves 
 
 Of those tread thoughtful, who, asleep like us. 
 
 To a new day woke never. Left behind 
 
 At Borca the not too long to be trusted 
 
 Malcuore ridge, we come beneath the safer 
 
 Pyramidal shadow of Mont Antelao 
 
 Across the Boite flung and Boite valley 
 
 Like a black carpet. Other side the shadow 
 
 The post house of Ven^s ere noon receives us 
 
 Eemembered friends, and shelters from a shower, 
 
 And entertains with bread and wine and coffee. 
 
 Refreshed and rested, forth again at one. 
 
 And forward with the Boite, she below 
 
 Deep in her grassy, village-sprinkled holms, 
 
 We with the road high on the mountain's breast 
 
 In and out winding, inward winding most. 
 
 To cross, high up, the Vallesina torrent 
 
 Down through the left-hand clefts impetuous rushing 
 
 Pray God it sweep not Vallesina with it, 
 
 Hamlet and mill and holm, into the Boite! 
 
 In Valle the road parts us at the fountain 
 
 In the piazza, and goes round by Jai, 
 
 Close under the Cadore j)ainter's birthplace — 
 
 Fit birthplace for a painter, picturesque 
 
 Pieve di Cadore, in its nook 
 
 Amidst aerial woods and precipices. 
 
 We, with the Boite, take the shorter route 
 
 Direct down the ravine to Perarolo. 
 
 Our path 's the old road many a year disused, 
 
 Broken and rough, and furrowed deep by torrents 
 
 Blockaded here by landslips from above, 
 
 Or rock detached, or arms of trees, projecting; 
 
 There crumbling to the Boite far below, 
 
 Now turning to the right, now to the left. 
 
Ascending now, and now again descending, 
 
 Tortuous as wounded snake ; scarce foot- wide now 
 
 Edging the bare abysm and bed of Boite, 
 
 And now a yoke of oxen some ten yards 
 
 Might jolt a cart along what once was pavement. 
 
 At half past three we issue with the Boite, 
 
 At Perarolo, out of the ravine, 
 
 "We to the coflfee-house beyond the bridge. 
 
 The Boite underneath to the Piave. 
 
 And now along the right bank of the waters 
 Of the Piave and the Boite blended 
 Together in one vast, wide gravelly bed, 
 We follow on, at four, our southward way. 
 Above us on our right the mountain flank. 
 Under our feet the road we had left at Valle; 
 Below us on the left the united rivers 
 Wafting on rafts down to the Adriatic 
 The red pine of Friuli; opposite, 
 The left-hand mountain range shuts out the east. 
 And with the right-hand vies precipitous. 
 Massy and bare and high and multiform ; 
 Worn into dark pine-bearing clefts the sides. 
 Or seamed with cataracts white, a savage scene, 
 Yet not without all touch of loveliness: 
 Here the first mulberry greets us, and the first 
 Eubicund blushing, everlasting pea. 
 And red valerian-; not a rocky ledge 
 Nor interspace between the rocks but glows 
 Vivid with rhododendron; ' now and then 
 The walnut spreads above us, now and then 
 The white robinia bloom perfume's the air. 
 And through its soft green foliage peers at times 
 The silvery chalice of the hazel nut. 
 And ivy for the absence of the vine 
 Makes to the eye amends ; anthericum's 
 
 ' Saw no Ehodod: until we had passed Omperzo; watched for it in vain 
 from Perarolo to Amperzo — 1868. — ' 
 
Heaven-pointing star erects his teilliant disk, 
 
 And on her lank stalk columbine droop graceful. 
 
 Even in the wide, waste, gravelly river bed, 
 
 Patches of hemp refresh the eye not seldom. 
 
 Even on the rugged mountain's arid side 
 
 Not seldom hangs the grassy green plough furrow, 
 
 And the stream turns the mill wheel, and the saw 
 
 Up and down in the log plies, up and down. 
 
 And up and down, and up and down, incessant. 
 
 And now, behold, at Castel di Lavazzo, 
 
 Though still the scene be rude and rough the sky, 
 
 Great Bacchus' glorious gift, the vine, at last, 
 
 The graceful, fair, delicious, joyous vine! 
 
 If, Pentheus like, in my audacious youth, 
 
 I ever slighted thee, maligned thee ever. 
 
 Forgive my truly penitent gray hairs, 
 
 thou nepenthe, sole not fabulous. 
 
 If there 's a cup in yonder Longarone, 
 
 It shall be drained to night to that God's honor, 
 
 Who speaks plain truth and quirks eschews and riddles. 
 
 To Bacchus ever fair and ever young, 
 
 Bacclius, the muse's friend, the friend of song. 
 
 The thyrsus in his hand, the ivy crown 
 
 About his brows from lofty Nysa down 
 
 In chariot drawn by tigers, see, he comes 
 
 A conqueror: twirl your timbrels, beat your drums. 
 
 To. civilize your savage western plains 
 
 He brings the pampinus twisted in his reins. 
 
 Such was my palinode as from the hill 
 
 Oi Castel di Lavazz' I followed down 
 
 The windings of the road to Longarone, 
 
 One sh6rt mile, where our worthy host JIarina, 
 
 Shows to the curious traveller to this day. 
 
 The butt from which I libated to Bacchus. 
 
 To day an opener prospect spreads before us. 
 Over our heads expands a milder sky: 
 Not i.ssued yet, we 're issuing from the mountains, 
 Not in the plains yet^ we 're fast drawing nigh. 
 
Passed on the right, two hours from Longarone, 
 
 The road by which last autumn we emerged 
 
 From old Bassano, Feltre, and Belluno 
 
 Into these Alpine heights, we reach ere noon 
 
 Capo di Ponte and Piave bridge, 
 
 Where the Piave, by a fallen-down mountain 
 
 Stopped in its southern course, wheels sudden west 
 
 To make its long detour round by Belluno, 
 
 And turns his back for aye on Serravalle. 
 
 Four hard boiled eggs, four cups of strong black coffee, 
 
 Bread, and a pint of wine, and half hour's rest, 
 
 And forward 'cross the covered wooden bridge 
 
 Which spans the river where it 's narrowest hemmed 
 
 Between the steep slate scaurs, and up the hill 
 
 By the old road; high noon above our heads 
 
 Under our feet the white dust, at our heels 
 
 Our shadows shrunk to pigmies following close 
 
 In search you 'd say, of shelter from the glare. 
 
 Slate strata horizontal from the hill, 
 
 Naked above, with vegetation clothed 
 
 On either side, of loveliest softest green: 
 
 Wild vine and clematis and fair robinia 
 
 And blood-stained cornel and laburnum's sister, 
 
 Cytisus nigricans, part black, part yellow, 
 
 And lonicera odoriferous. 
 
 Its own twig with its own twig intertwined. 
 
 And round about wound with convolvulus sepium. 
 
 Fasces without the axes and the fear. 
 
 Various the panorama from the summit: 
 
 Behind us the Piave, and our walk 
 
 Of yesterday from Perarolo downward ; 
 
 Belluno on the right, white in the sun; 
 
 Below us, on the left, the new road winding ; 
 
 Before us Santa Croce's turquois lake 
 
 Reflecting eastward the green, sloping flank 
 
 Of Croda Liscia, rippling on the west 
 
 Up to our onward road across the bottom ; 
 
 Fadalto's fallen-down ti-ansverse ridge shuts in 
 
 The lake and southern prospect; half way up, 
 
 85 
 
Our road, ascending from the lake and bottom, 
 
 Traverses Santa Croce's pendent village. 
 
 And now thou hast seen the panorama round. 
 
 What need 'st thou travel the way witli me, reader, 
 
 Down from the hill along the lake and bottom 
 
 And up Fatalto's steep opposing glacis? 
 
 Go, thou art free, let loose from school and master, 
 
 To romp in the playground an hour or so, 
 
 And take thine idle fling and spin thy top; 
 
 Or, if it suit thy wayward humor better. 
 
 Count up how often in one page Childe Harold 
 
 Knocks out the brains of Common Sense and Priscian. 
 
 Good bye ! at half past four we meet again 
 
 At Cima di Fadalto, there it 's yonder. 
 
 That crow's nest on the ridge's airy summit. 
 
 I never was a cynic, never shunned 
 
 Human society, from praise or blame 
 
 Never away turned without tingling ear: 
 
 Yet I can bear to be a while alone 
 
 Left by the whole world with my muse and daughter, 
 
 And in such solitude feel so sweet contentment 
 
 That I start at a foot-sound or a voice. 
 
 And hear of readers in natura rerum 
 
 Existent, with such mingled doubt and fear. 
 
 And curiosity, as a child first time 
 
 Eeads in his primer of great grisly bears. 
 
 Caymans > and crocodiles and roaring lions. 
 
 So take it not for personal, gentle reader. 
 
 That, without thought of thee or our appointment, 
 
 I had posted down from Cima di Fadalto, 
 
 And was already on the Lago Morto's 
 
 Desolate edge, when thou cam'st running after. 
 
 Crying "Stop, stop, and wait for thy companion." 
 
 Death is unlovely, and as death unlovely 
 
 The Lago Morto, so called not unaptly, 
 
 A dim, uusightly, joyless, sluggish pool, 
 
 Stretched oblong in the bottom like a ditch. 
 
 Crocodihis Palpebrosus. Imp. Dit-t. 
 86 
 
Between the bare and rugged mountains trending 
 
 Parallel southward on our right and left, 
 
 As we descend from Cima di Fadalto 
 
 To take our way along the eastern brink. 
 
 Strewed with loose stones the mountains, with loose stones 
 
 The water's edge : our road descends into, 
 
 And traverses, a wilderness of stones. 
 
 Dreary as that grim pass down which all roads 
 
 Converging lead out of the cheerful sunlight, 
 
 Not to emerge again; but we emerge, 
 
 Rounding at last the left-hand mountain's spur, 
 
 And under shadow of the first sweet chestnuts 
 
 Entering, well pleased, Negrisola's happier basin, 
 
 Where at the foot of beech-clad Monte Pizzoc 
 
 The downy peach hangs ripening in the sun. 
 
 And the black fig swells, luscious. Every stream 
 
 Turns a filanda wheel, and peasant girls. 
 
 With black eyes and black hair and sallow cheeks 
 
 And long bare arms, shift sleeves and purple skirts. 
 
 Sing merrily in chorus while they sit 
 
 Unravelling in hot water, and entwining 
 
 Into the wondrous, golden yellow thread, 
 
 The fragile filaments of the cocoon. 
 
 Only too full of life the lake, one green 
 
 Luxuriant bower of willows, reeds and alders. 
 
 Rushes, and irides, and white nymphaeas, 
 
 And trembling aspen, and Herculean poplar. 
 
 And many a sedge by fair Cyrene loved 
 
 And used for binding of her long, dank hair. 
 
 Maize fields receive us next and aspens planted 
 
 Each side the road symmetrical; and Meschio, 
 
 Carrying the lake's superabundant waters. 
 
 Keeps joyful company with us on the left. 
 
 Towards Serravalle, where arrived at seven. 
 
 We leave sub dio, Meschio and maize fields. 
 
 An aspen-planted road, and in Cattina's 
 
 Excellent Osteria alia Porta, 
 
 Against the now sometime impending storm 
 
 And gathering night, seek shelter, sup and sleep. 
 
 87 
 
Come Muse ! we Ve been too humble, singing always 
 Of roads and roadside inn and entertainment, 
 And tree and flower and shrub and nature's face, 
 In spiritual as in unspiritual 
 Often, alas! unlovely: let 's explore 
 A loftier region, twang a louder string. 
 Crowned heads inspire me now, and my base-born 
 Inglorious heart glows with a generous warmth, 
 The while of kings and kingly deeds I sing, 
 And prouder of myself grow and my species. 
 Time was, this Serravalle, which so loud 
 The wheel of the silk-spinner echoes now 
 And paper-maker, echoed other soiinds, 
 And not shopkeepers here their petty trades 
 Plied diligent, but king Matruco's mailed 
 And booted spearmen shouted, laughed, and revelled. 
 And contributions for their royal master 
 Exacted at the sword's point from the traveller 
 Through Serravalle 's narrow, dark defile. 
 Yonder behold high on the mountain side 
 The ruins of the den so royal once 
 Where the lord lion couched, and whence the roar 
 Issued that shook the hills round, and the valleys. 
 Defender of the faith, too, was Matruco, 
 Stout as was ever England's own eighth Harry, 
 Sharp cauterizing to the bone as ever 
 Spain's second Philip or his Duke of Alva; 
 No Christian, to be sure, but not the less 
 On that account intolerant of all 
 Heterodoxy, every step aside 
 From the high turnpike road direct to heaven. 
 One day from 'cross the sea a palmer gray 
 With staff and cocklehat came wandering by. 
 And, tired, in Serravalle pass sat down, 
 To rest a while and munch his mouldy crust 
 Not even with water or green cresses kitchened. 
 Not long he had sat there when a lady veiled 
 Came all alone upon her ambling palfrey, 
 And had passed on, but, "Bless thee, gentle lady. 
 
Christ and Christ's virgin mother," said the palmer, 
 
 "And pass me safe through dangerous Serravalle." 
 
 The lady stopped, she was Matruco's daughter, 
 
 Young, lovely, and in secret heart a Christian : 
 
 "Take this gold ring, reverend, holy father; 
 
 'Twill pass thee safe through dangerous Serravalle." 
 
 The lady ambled on; the gold ring safe 
 
 Through Serravalle's barred gates passed the palmei. 
 
 But king Matruco's daughter — ah! she died 
 
 The martyr's death in yonder castle's dungeon. 
 
 And king Matruco, 'mongst men while he lived. 
 
 Lived praised and glorified, and when he died 
 
 Was crowned with amaranth by his thankful Gods, 
 
 And bid sit down among them, and for ever 
 
 In heaven reign, as on earth he had reigned despotic. 
 
 "Well done, my Muse, not badly sung this one, 
 
 Great, glorious king; come, let 's have at another. 
 
 A Christian this, a meek, pacific Christian, 
 
 Who had learned to love his neighbour and to turn 
 
 To him- who struck him on one cheek, the other. 
 
 On heaven his thoughts were fixed, his eyes on heaven. 
 
 As Cromwell pious, but he kept like Cromwell, 
 
 His powder dry, and twice a week his blunted 
 
 Battle-ax sent to the armourer's to be sharpened. 
 
 What wonder? for his arm was never not 
 
 In exercise, death dealing round, and terror, 
 
 And long forgot by Serravalle's serfs 
 
 Matruco's praises in the praise of Eichard, 
 
 Princely Gueccelli's great and glorious son. 
 
 Of Cam's most noble house, who twice laid waste 
 
 With fire and sword Friuli's fertile plains; 
 
 Conquered in Udine's hard fought, bloody battle, 
 
 And Sacile took by storm and Spilimberg, 
 
 Killing the males, and home to Serravalle 
 
 Dragging the women captive. Christian women, 
 
 J3y Christian men made captive, who had first 
 
 In cold blood slain their husbands, sons, and brothers. 
 
 Go, sceptic reader, and his virtues con 
 
 Where on his royal herse they shine inscribed 
 
In Saint Giustina's church in Serravalle. 
 
 Himself there too in sculptured marble, see, 
 
 Supine extended ; pages at his feet 
 
 Stand weeping, in its scabbard, not far off. 
 
 Rusts his discarded sword, alas ! no more 
 
 To desolate, in Christ's name and the Virgin's, 
 
 The Christian hearth, and from the Alps extend 
 
 To distant Udine and the Adriatic 
 
 The domination of Cam's noble house. 
 
 Hast seen and heard enough ? or carest to hear 
 
 Further, how death surprised the warrior young. 
 
 In fata viridis concessit post 
 
 Egregia facta multa, or to learn 
 
 That the disconsolate widow, who this weight 
 
 Of monumental marble on the heads 
 
 Imposed of those grim cuirassed halberdiers, 
 
 (For power, when dead and rotten, what support 
 
 Fitter than arms, its sole support when living ?) 
 
 Herself was a' king's daughter, and in honor 
 
 And pious memory of th' illustrious dead, 
 
 Regale monuvieritum hoc paravit 
 
 Anno millesimo trigeshno 
 
 Et quinto clecimo salutis muncli. 
 
 Of kings enough, but scarce enough of saints. 
 
 At least from me, thou 'st heard, so gird thee up. 
 
 And, if thou 'rt well in wind, yon calvary 
 
 From station climb to station — nay, don't start; 
 
 I didn't say, on thy knees, but I'll not press thee. 
 
 For the hill 's steep and thou perhaps art tired. 
 
 Or not in the pat humor, yet it had led thee 
 
 Up to the very sanctum of the saint ; 
 
 For dynasties are changed not here alone 
 
 In Serravalle, but in highest heaven, 
 
 Since king Matruco's daughter with her life 
 
 The forfeit paid of her apostacy. 
 
 And Saint Agosta 's worshipped in the cell 
 
 In which the renegade Agosta suffered. 
 
 So be it; old Father Time 's a harlequin 
 
 Plas many a queer trick on his magic wand; 
 
And who knows but he '11 yet with such a slap 
 Come down on thee and me as to transform 
 Me all at once into a master poet, 
 Thee, dreaded critic, into a disciple? 
 
 Between two rows on either side of green 
 Acer negundo, a delicious shade 
 Conducts us hence to Ceneda, a mile, 
 Though straight and flat, not tedious, nor at times 
 Not with gleditschia triacanthus varied. 
 And morus papyrifera and sumach. 
 All old friends, not before met on this journey. 
 Nor left behind with Coneda the cool 
 Embowering shadow of the promenade, 
 And recognition glad at every step. 
 Of some well loved, and once familiar, face 
 Estranged by absence, but forgotten never: 
 Tall cypresses impervious to the light 
 Pillar with stately shafts, on either side. 
 The straight white road, with broad catalpa leaves 
 And oriental platanus overhung. 
 And the red clustering corals of ailanthus. 
 Beyond the promenade the road receives us, 
 Straight too, between deep ditches, in whose bottom 
 Ducklings swim joyful down the limpid stream. 
 Innocent souls, be happy while ye may 
 And not yet at your throats man's butcher knife 
 Ruthless, inexorable, bloody, cruel, 
 Humane, believe himself, and heaven-inspired. 
 Ay, to be sure ! for what else is man's God, 
 Man's heaven, man's inspiration, but his own 
 Dira cupido? little ducks, swim on; 
 And chirrup, chirrup, on your native aspen, 
 Ye shrill cicadae orni; not so nice. 
 So delicately tutored is mine ear, 
 But it can bear your loud obstreperous song ; 
 And on the bare bark lay thine eggs in peace, 
 And with fine russet sponge from evil eye, 
 And still more evil hand, securely cover. 
 
Phlegmatic bombyx dispar, quaker dressed 
 
 All in one downy, velvet suit, cream-colored. 
 
 San Giacomo's park and ornamental gateways 
 
 And cheerful open village left behind, 
 
 And Colle on the hill passed on our left. 
 
 We follow on between sharp paliurus 
 
 And tall robinia hedges, our straight road; 
 
 Debouching with it, after three short miles, 
 
 Into the high post road from Pordenone; 
 
 And so, ere half past five, Conegliano 
 
 Reach tired, and entering by the boulevard 
 
 Le Fosse, take up quarters for the night 
 
 At the Campana, amid gardens glowing 
 
 Vivid with orange, lemon, and pomegranate. 
 
 Not without intermixture of our own 
 
 Hollyhocks stately, and red-blushing roses, 
 
 And aromatic pinks and gillyflowers. 
 
 And dahlias every colour on the prism. 
 
 Supper of rice minestra, ripe red cherries, 
 
 Cheese, wine, bread, apricots, and strong black coffee, 
 
 Rank poison to the sedentary, whether 
 
 Steady at home in easy elbow-chair. 
 
 Or jolting in malle-poste or railway carriage, _ 
 
 Or wheeling in a Bith-fly round and round 
 
 The pump-room after fugitive Hygeia — 
 
 Poison to all such bodies without legs 
 
 The hap-hazard medley, which, to us, provided 
 
 With Exercise's royal letters patent. 
 
 Is nectar and ambrosia and sweet health. 
 
 A half hour after supper at the window. 
 
 Snuffing the evening fragrance of the garden, 
 
 And marking how night's sentries one by one 
 
 Their stated posts take on heaven's battlements. 
 
 At last to bed scarce willing yet, though tired, 
 
 To close our eyes even for a few short hours 
 
 On this mixed world of ugliness and beauty 
 
 Sushine and shadow, pleasure, pain and death. 
 
 Friday, July the tenth, ere six o'clock 
 
The bustle of the market underneath 
 
 Our bedroom windows, wakes us, as unwilling 
 
 To exchange a world of dreams for a real world, 
 
 As, some few short hours since we were unwilling 
 
 To exchange a real world for a world of dreams. 
 
 But, willing or unwilling, man must waken, 
 
 And, willing or unwilling, man must sleep. 
 
 And, willing or unwilling, man must dream; 
 
 Or it may hap must n6t dream, as the moment, 
 
 His stern, uncompromising, arrogant, 
 
 Imperious, unrelenting, cruel mistress 
 
 In her caprice commands; so we awake. 
 
 And for th' adventures of another day, 
 
 If rightly called adventures, our day's petty 
 
 Vicissitudes of hot, cold, wet and dry, 
 
 Uphill and down hill, baiting, rest and motion, 
 
 Grird ourselves, up, ale'rt, and forth, at eight, 
 
 By boulevard and promenade and road, 
 
 Under the clear blue sky and burning sun, 
 
 Or, as it may be, in the pleasant cool 
 
 Of overshadowing gleditschia standards — 
 
 Ah, that so fair a tree bore thorn so cursed! — 
 
 And broad catalpas and julibrasins, 
 
 And trembling aspens intertwined with vines. 
 
 Strangers as yet, and long may they be strangers. 
 
 To foul oidium taint; and guelder rose 
 
 Studs with its full white moons the maple hedge, 
 
 And stiff, old-maid stenactis borders, prim. 
 
 The broad ditch slope, and sallower beside 
 
 Tall saponaria's flaunting muslin white, 
 
 Droops sallow comfrey, and alisma bathes, 
 
 And watercresses, in the ditches bottom; 
 
 And far and wide spiraea over all 
 
 Flings lavish from her censer spiced perfume. 
 
 Why stands before the widower's troubled eye 
 His long lost loved one, at this moment why? 
 Plain as twelve years ago he saw her stand, 
 A ragusine centaurea in her hand. 
 Chance picked up relic of green house and home, 
 
 93 
 
The sad day she set out strange lands to roam 
 With him and her one child, and now she 's gone; 
 And with his child the widower left alone 
 The useless sigh to heave, and tear let fall, 
 Upon a flower plucked from thy castle wall, 
 Sweet Susigana — see it 's the pale green ' 
 Downy, gold-crowned centaurea ragusine. 
 
 Uncultivated either side the stream 
 
 A whole long mile the bed of the Piave, 
 
 Here met again returning from its round 
 
 By Feltre and Belluno, and bridged over 
 
 Gravel and stream four hundred metres wide; 
 
 A goodly work to see, and not less useful 
 
 Than to see goodly, specially to us 
 
 Whose dinner waits beyond at Spresiano. 
 
 So, paid the toll and crossed the bridge, and cleared 
 
 The waste offside of the Piave bed. 
 
 We reach ere noon and dine at, Spresiano, 
 
 On sliced polenta pudding and bean soup. 
 
 And fresh anchovies from the Adriatic, 
 
 Unused until to day to swim in wine. 
 
 Forward again at one, and from beneath 
 
 Warm glowing summer's lofty sapphire arch, 
 
 Look back on cloudy winter's cold white tents 
 
 Pitched far and wide upon the alpine summits. 
 
 And pleased compare our skill strategical 
 
 With Hannibal's: then right about and southward. 
 
 But not long we 're contented, discontent 
 
 Being the one thing indispensable 
 
 Not to man only but to all that lives. 
 
 For what is life but action, and to action 
 
 What other stimulus than discontent? 
 
 Sultry the air, the sun's rays hot and burning, 
 
 Dusty the road, we 've dined and we are thirsty. 
 
 Water 's the cry, but no where 's to be found, 
 
 Except in the frogs' puddle, even so much 
 
 As one drop; ah, were it only for a moment, 
 
 ' The leaves and stalk are nearly white, resembling white cloth. 
 
 ti4 
 
Give us the mountains back, and clear cool stream, 
 
 Even the snow and rain — but see! a shop 
 
 With bottles on a table at the door. 
 
 Box of cigars, a lemon and a tumbler. 
 
 We can yet punch here if we can't get water. 
 
 But we get water, for it 's a water shop, 
 
 And three centesimi pay for every glass, 
 
 Pure, or with lemon flavored, or rosolio. 
 
 Or milky with stomachic aniseed 
 
 Dextrously squirted out through the corked bottle's 
 
 Scrimp crow quill. Nor on us alone work potent 
 
 The plumb meridian rays; in all Madonna 
 
 Di Rovere village not one soul is stirring, 
 
 Not even a dog abroad, and jealously 
 
 — As if, within, Mars had again met Venus — 
 
 Closed in Di Tressa's villa every pane 
 
 Of the innumerable-paned casino, 
 
 Against the prying, penetrating God. 
 
 The stones our feet scorch, and, methinks, the air 
 
 Grows hotter with the cliirp of the cicadae, 
 
 And counter- croak incessant of the frogs. 
 
 So, not unwelcome, opens at a quarter 
 
 Past four, Treviso's city gate before, us, 
 
 And the cool shade of curtained porticoes 
 
 And awnings, and we hear the pleasant bubbling 
 
 Of fountains and the murmur of the Sile, 
 
 And in the molinefco sup beside 
 
 The clattering mill-wheel and fast-rushing race ; 
 
 Not ill pleased to enjoy until tomorrow 
 
 liest and the shadow, or, if it likes us better. 
 
 In Giacomelli's garden, promenade 
 
 Among the dates and cactuses and yuccas; 
 
 Or wherebetween two fair Aralias shoots 
 
 Stately to heaven green stripling Araucaria, 
 
 Joyous, and of his south-sea home forgetful; 
 
 And old man Pilocereus far has wandered 
 
 From his companions, and our pity claims 
 
 For his decrepitude and long gray hairs; 
 
 Or onward where dianthoidean, blue 
 
Tillandsia, feeds on air, and sago lurks 
 
 Nutritious in the cycas revoluta, 
 
 And coffee for the heart of man prepares 
 
 Her salutiferous enlivening beverage, 
 
 And bids him not to envy Jove his nectar; 
 
 And erudite papyrus his days passes 
 
 In well earned golden leisure: or at last 
 
 Tired sauntering, sit down in the tent pitched for us 
 
 By pendulous Japonic sophora, 
 
 And look up at the hara bicolor 
 
 To and fro swinging in his airy cage 
 
 Armillary, and in our hearts almost 
 
 Quarrel with Nature who such gorgeous plumage 
 
 Married capricious to that odious voice. 
 
 Home to the molinetto then, and bed, 
 
 And dreams of our long journey almost finished. 
 
 And sandy deserts and siroccos sultry, 
 
 And thirst and parched lips, and a sound confused 
 
 Of clattering mill-wheels and fast-rushing water. 
 
 And whispering arbours cool and crowing cocks, 
 
 And Guinea-fowl in cages, crying go-ak. 
 
 Next morning early a new sun awakes us. 
 With as bright golden light from face and shoulders. 
 And every chrysolite and carbuncle 
 And stud phosphoric of his chariot, streaming. 
 And every sparkling diamond of his harness. 
 And bids us welcome to Osiris' city, 
 Worthy at least one whole day to detain us 
 Well worthy, were it only for his sake 
 Who, born within its walls, slept not content 
 Till in Eome's walls he had made him such a breach. 
 That he could in and out and back and forward 
 Pass when he liked with all his Gothic host. 
 No leave of gate asked or of pope or caesar. 
 In vain we search; in all Treviso no one 
 Of Totila knows more than that he saw 
 The light first somewhere in, or near,. Treviso : 
 What wonder? we have as vainly sought in Andes 
 
And Padua for the cradles of their heroes. 
 
 Ah Time, tliat wouldst be called an honest landlord, 
 
 Yet in thy care to let thy lodgings clean 
 
 And unincumbered, sweep 'st out not alone 
 
 The dust and rubbish of tli' outgoing tenant, 
 
 Cut, with th' exception of some massy piece 
 
 That mole sua firm stands and defies thee, 
 
 Even the very furniture and goods 
 
 He has left behind to thy safe care and keeping. 
 
 Ah Time, not even thrifty, where are now. 
 
 The relics of the eleventh Pope Benedict, 
 
 Treviso's Bocasini wise and good? 
 
 Strange to Treviso's ears the very name ; 
 
 We said or thought as up the stair we turned 
 
 Into the Mont di Pieta to see 
 
 The body of the Saviovr borne by angels. 
 
 One of the massy pieces left behind 
 
 By George of Castelfranco, and not yet 
 
 With all his will thereto cleared out by Time. 
 
 I never was a connoisseur in painting. 
 
 And least of all, not being myself religious, 
 
 In the religious genre: angels' wings 
 
 I have never yet seen, don't so much as know 
 
 Where the angel wears his wings, on his travelling cap. 
 
 And travelling staff and boots, like Maia's son. 
 
 And so must go to seek them when he wants them ; 
 
 Op, peacock-fashion, handy on his back, 
 
 And needing only to be fairly spread out. 
 
 So of Georgione's angels I'll say nothing. 
 
 And, with respect to bis dead Christ, but hint 
 
 1 had liked it better had the legs been matches. 
 
 Spacious the old cathedral of Treviso, 
 Saint Peter's, founded by Prosdocimus 
 In honor of his teacher, anno fifty — 
 Pity no stone remains of the first walls ! 
 We stay nut long, for rococo the tombs 
 And thick with dust; the pictures black and mouldy; 
 Perspective architectural none, no shrines, 
 No stained-glass rainbows fascinate the eye 
 
And almost lead the understanding captive. 
 The solemn waste but presses on the heart, 
 And drives out to the open air again, 
 And bright blue sky and sun and living world. 
 
 Sunday, July the twelfth, at half past nine 
 We bid our last farewell to old Tarvisium, 
 And through the Altinia portal hold our way 
 Along the level aspen-planted road 
 Dusty and white and straight, and Zaara hot, 
 Between its grassy, broad luxuriant ditches. 
 Deep in whose bottom butomus rears high 
 His purple standard over the clear water. 
 And vallisneria's brave Leanders swim 
 Ardent in search of their expectant Heros, 
 Nothing afraid, though all around them bristle 
 Sagittaefolia Sagittaria's arrows. 
 Lonely the road and still, as though remote 
 A whole week's journey yet the capital city. 
 Our footsteps' sound disturbs the frogs that squat 
 On the broad floating nuphar lutea's leaves. 
 Or shelter from the sun's rays in the typha, 
 And one by one, as we approach, they go 
 Plop plop into the water; azure bright 
 Sylphide libellulas flit silent-winged 
 From carex spike to carex spike; or poise 
 Weightless upon the filagree thalictrum; 
 And, timid, helpless, shy, and fugitive 
 As harmless, the green lizard wares our coming. 
 And darts for safety to the nearest hole; 
 And, at long intervals, a basking adder 
 Starts, and away shoots rustling through the grass. 
 Not to be followed even if we wgre willing, 
 Even if we shared man's appetite to kill. 
 Dinner at half past twelve in Mogliano, 
 Where, from the flames resurgent, the Fenice 
 Friendly invites us in, and treats us to 
 Plentiful rice minestra and red wine. 
 And the acquaintance, for the nonce, of shipwrigut 
 
Fraccliia of Venice, here with wife and child 
 
 The days canicular villeggiaturing, 
 
 And leaving to his prentices to cobble 
 
 The battered British bark that has cleared out 
 
 In the warm sunny port of the lagoons, 
 
 And bounes it joyful for its well loved home 
 
 Of cloud and fog and smoke and liberty. 
 
 Ah Venice, Venice, thou whose gonfalon 
 
 Waved once from Cyprus to the banks of Garda, 
 
 Thou who thy royal nuptials solemnizedst 
 
 Yearly with Adria on Bucentaur poop — 
 
 Down on thy craven knees, and kiss the hand 
 
 That, raised to punish, graciously relents, 
 
 Takes off the interdiction, and restores thee 
 
 The Austrian free port's privilege and rank. 
 
 Thou mayst with industry and prudence yet 
 
 Grow rich again; and power with riches comes. 
 
 And power 's not far removed from domination. 
 
 Is it the Lion of Saint Mark I hear 
 
 Through his sleep growling, and the Lombard Biscia 
 
 Out of his covert answering with a kiss? 
 
 And is it only shadows of the clouds 
 
 Flitting across Verona's Alps I see 
 
 Northward, or trains of cannon, horse and foot, 
 
 In headlong route for Austria, sauve qui peuf^ 
 
 Mestre at four, wide streeted, dull .and lifeless, 
 Except some promenaders from the city. 
 If promenaders justly may be called 
 Who can't the city leave except by rail, 
 Or boat, and never but by omnibus 
 From railway station or'the water's edge 
 Arrive in Mestre. Too late for the train, 
 And neither so brave nor so inexperienced 
 As to do battle with the barcajuoli, 
 We put up for the night in the Vapore, 
 Sup on fried liver and cappucci soup, 
 And drink our fraccolo, and go to bed. 
 And sleep as best we may, plagued all night long 
 By the zanzaras — sweet foretaste of Venice ! — 
 
Till the sun rising sends them tired, to sleep, 
 And full of blood, and, to supply their places. 
 Wakens fresh myriads of black buzzing flies. 
 
 Monday, July thirteenth, concludes our journey 
 By early train to Venice and our lodgings, 
 Once Petrarch's on the Ripa dei Schiaveni, 
 Opposite San Giorgio and the midday sun, 
 And 'cross the quay scarce thirty paces distant 
 From the up-splashing Adriatic wave, 
 First house beyond the Ponte del Sepolcro. 
 Islands, with churches crowned, bay-in the sea. 
 And streak with tower and minaret the horizon. 
 Long, narrow, noiseless, black as death or night, 
 • Not rowed, but pushed by standing sculler onward, 
 Incessant gondolas glide to and fro, 
 Back, forward, left and right, in all directions ; 
 Gay, if in silence cfe,n be gaiety. 
 With comers, goers, idle or on business. 
 Motley below our windows swarms the quay ; 
 And gondoliers for fares call, and colporteurs 
 Offer for sale their wares, and watermen 
 Pump into barrels water from the main land, 
 In boats brought over to supply the wells 
 Of Venice, dried up by the July heat. 
 Our landlord Spindione Vianello, 
 Enriched by the monopoly, has honor 
 In Venice, as in Rome, once, Pluvius Jove. 
 
 And now we 're safe in Venice, where art thou. 
 Reader? — in London, or New York, or Paris, 
 Or what yet greater city to be built 
 At the Nile's source, or by La Plata's wave ? 
 What matter? . . thou and we are to meet never 
 Nearer than we have this day met each other, 
 Or any day, in thought, of this long travel. 
 Farewell, and whatsoever separate way 
 Thou strikest tomorrow, nothing fare the worse 
 That thou 'st so far with us in spirit travelled. 
 Nothing the worse fare, but the better rather; 
 
And sometimes think with pleasure of thy friends, 
 The wandering Irish Gleeman ' and his daughter, 
 No other pay they ask, no other beigh. ^ 
 
 ' The Gleeman, the author of "The song of the Traveller," see Conybearo. 
 
 "The song of the Traveller professes to record the wanderings of a certain 
 'Gleeman' the contemporary of Eormanric and of Aetla. 375 — 433." — 
 Guest, History of English Rhythms, vol. II. P. 76. 
 
 "The Gleeman was born among the Myrgings, a Gothic race dwelling on 
 the Marches which separated the Engle from the Sweve , during the fourth and 
 fifth centuries " Guest. Ibid. vol. II P. 397. 
 
 ^ Armlet — see "The song of the Traveller." 
 
 TlIK END. 
 
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