Classic Poem

THE LAKE

Where the Styrian mountains rise
Close to Mariazell, lies
Buried in a pinewood brake
A most beautiful green lake.
Lizard's back is not so green
As its soft and tremulous sheen;
Hermit's home on Athos' hill
Cannot be a place more still.
Blissful Covert! there is not
Like that Styrian lake a spot
That I know by land or sea,
Whose unsleeping memory
Works so potently in me.
'Tis good to have a nook of earth
To be with us in our mirth,
And to set a haunt apart
To be household in the heart,
A local shrine, whence gentle sorrow
Hope and soothing thought may borrow;
And which may be every hour
In the light, or shade, or shower,
Or the stillness, or the wind,
Or the sunset, as the mind
Would the light within should vary,
A true mental sanctuary.
What may hallow grief, but thought
And soft feeling closely wrought?
For the heart, which in its pain
Can the outer world disdain,
And the kind earth which we tread,
How shall it be comforted?
And that pensive being, mirth,
If it be untied from earth,
Is a wanton, dreamy thing,
Like a pine-tree's murmuring.
Styria is a wondrous land,
Special work of beauty's hand,
Where amidst the tranquil pines
Many a green lake meekly shines,
And upon its bosom glasses
All the slumberous dark masses
From the mighty firwoods thrown,
And white steep, and sunny cone.
For the forest murmurings,
And for lawnlike openings
Where in shady belts of trees
Nestle the lone villages,
For sweet brooks and ruined halls
And romantic waterfalls,
And a coloring so bright
That the land is green by night,
And for echoes waking round
When the convent-bell shall sound,
For unwonted woodland grace
Styria is a wondrous place:
And it is the nook of earth
That is with me in my mirth,
A real Eden, whence I borrow
Food for song and calm for sorrow.
Most I love that placid lake,
Buried in the pinewood brake.
There the little pool is laid
Quiet in the lisping shade,
Mountain water in a cup
To the blue skies looking up,
With the bubbles brightly beading
All the gleamy surface, speeding
Up like silver fish where'er
Earthy springs mount to the air.
There the little pool was laid
Quiet in the pinewood shade,
When the Roman hosts were come
To these woods of Noricum.
Emperors rose and tribunes fell,
Earth was governed ill or well;
There was famine, there was war,
And sedition's dreadful jar,
And man's lot became so dreary
That the earth grew old and weary.
Were it not for her free mirth
Men would make a slave of earth.
But this way there came no breath
Of calamity or death.
They pierced not through the pinewood brake
To the little Styrian lake.
All the changes which it saw
Where by the harmonious law
And the sweetly pleading reasons
Of the four and fair-tongued seasons.
Pearl dawn and hazy noon,
And the yellow-orbed moon,
And the purple midnight, came
Through those very years the same.
The lake had all its own free will,
So it was translucent still;
For the summer day was fair,
When the white-banked clouds were there,
And the bright moths in the air;
And the thunder cleared away
For the evening's slanting ray,
And the thrushes in the rain
Sang with all their might and main
To the young ones in their home:
What recked they of mighty Rome?
Not a moth or bird did shine
Brighter there for Constantine.
Blessed earth! O blessed lake!
Shut within thy pinewood brake,
Angels saw thee in thy glee,
Of the Roman Empire free!
Then romantic days came on;
Nature still as calmly shone
On the fragrant pinewood shade
Where the Styrian lake was laid.
Earl with belt and knight with spur,
These made no unwonted stir
In the green and glossy deep,
Nor woke the echoes from the steep.
And if ever highborn maid
To the river did unlade
Her sad heart of freight of love,
When could songs hard fortune move?
Yet the stream forgot the wail
Ere it passed the sunken vale,
Where the little tremulous lake
Sparkles in the hollow brake.
And the merry hunting-horn,
Speaking in the cold white morn,
Bore not on its ringing breath
Tidings of the newborn Faith.
Yet methinks 'twere not unmeet
To believe a trouble sweet,
Like a new soul, found its road
Into that retired abode,
Somewhat of a murmuring
Through the pine-boughs vibrating,
When they caught the harmless swell
Of the earliest convent bell.
If sound have one human birth
Blending wholly with the earth,
Rising, growing, near or far,
With no other sound at war,
Which can sorrow or rejoice
Like a natural earthborn voice,
Natural as the breezes blowing,
Pastoral as the oxen lowing,
'Tis the undulating swell
Of the woodland abbey bell.