Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 7/Am Schweitz
AM SCHWEITZ.
I.
We saw the nest of snow and ice
Where the lauwine was born,
We stood beneath the obelisk
Of that great Matterhorn.
II.
Where’er the timid chamois drinks
We traced the mountain stream,
Around whose curves and shallow slips
Blue stars of gentian gleam.
III.
We saw, from a gray mountain top,
The rainbow in the spray,
Where mimic icebergs float across
The blue Marjälen See.
IV.
I hardly can remember all,
It seems so long ago,
Since three of us walked merrily
Among the fields of snow.
V.
The mountains look so lonely,
So scornful of our mirth,
As if they’d sat for ever
As Princes of the earth.
VI.
When our world was rolled in fire,
Shapeless among the spheres,
The Alps rose in a bubble
To last a million years.
VII.
Shall we tell our little troubles,
Shall we mar the hour that runs,
Shall we raise the ghost of sorrow
Before those kingly ones?
VIII.
Far better be a Crétin,
And sleep with beasts at night,
Than cry for to-morrow, like children,
Or weep for a dead delight.
IX.
Look on the grim old mountains,
And learn of them repose,
They flame in the Morgen-glimmer,
But never melt their snows.
X.
To them we seem no stronger
Than foam on a wintry sea;
Our lives will soon be covered
By the snows of eternity.
XI.
It is an old old lesson,
And we learned it long ago,
When three of us walked merrily
Among the fields of snow.