The Traveller

Excerpt from "Gertrude Of Wyoming"


Apart there was a deep untrodden grot,
Where oft the reading hours sweet Gertrude wore;
Tradition had not named its lonely spot;
But here (methinks) might India's sons explore
Their father's dust, or lift, perchance of yore,
Their voice to the great Spirit: rocks sublime
To human art a sportive semblance bore,
And yellow lichens coloured all the clime,
Like moonlight battlements, and towers decayed by time.

But high in amphitheatre above,
Gay tinted woods their massy foliage threw:
Breathed but an air of heaven, and all the grove
As if instinct with living spirit grew,
Rolling its verdant gulfs of every hue;
And now suspended was the pleasing din,
Now from a murmur faint it swelled anew,
Like the first note of organ heard within
Cathedral aisles, ere yet its symphony begin.

It was in this lone valley she would charm
the lingering noon, where flowers a couch had strown;
Her cheek reclining, and her snowy arm
On hillock by the pine-tree half o'ergrown:
And aye that volume on her lap is thrown,
Which every heart of human mould endears;
With Shakspear's self she speaks and smiles alone,
And no intruding visitation fears,
To shame the unconscious laugh, or stop her sweetest tears.

And nought within the grove was seen or heard.
But stock-doves plaining through its gloom profound,
Or winglet of the fairy humming bird,
Like atoms of the rainbow fluttering round;
When, lo! there entered to its inmost ground
A youth, the stranger of a distant land;
He was, to weet, for eastern mountains bound;
But late th' equator suns his cheeks had tanned,
And California's gales his roving bosom fanned.

A steed, whose rein hung loosely o'er his arm,
He led dismounted; ere his leisure pace,
Amid the brown leaves, could her ear alarm,
Close he had come, and worshipped for a space
Those downcast features: she her lovely face
Uplift on one, whose lineaments and frame
Wore youth and manhood's intermingled grace:
Iberian seemed his boot, his robe the same,
And well the Spanish plume his lofty looks became

For Albert's home he sought, her finger fair
Has pointed where the father's mansion stood.
Returning from the copse he soon was there;
And soon has Getrude hied from dark green wood;
Nor joyess, by the converse, understood
Between the man of age and pilgrim young,
That gay congeniality of mood,
And early liking from acquaintance sprung;
Full fluently coversed their guest in England's tongue.

And well could he his pilgrimage of taste
Unfold, and much they loved his fervid strain,
While he each fair variety retraced
Of climes, and manners, o'er the eastern main.
Now happy Switzer's hills, romantic Spain,
Gay lilied fields of France, or, more refined,
The soft Ausonia's monumental reign;
Nor less each rural image he designed,
Than all the city's pomp and home of human kind.

Anon some wilder portraiture he draws;
Of Nature's savage glories he would speak,
The loneliness of earth that overawes,
Where, resting by some tomb of old Cacique,
The lama-driver on Peruvia's peak,
Nor living voice nor motion marks around;
But storks that to the boundless forest shriek,
Or wild-cane arch high flung o'er gulf profound,
That fluctuates when the storms of El Dorado sound.