Classic Poem

Thou art beautiful, Lake Leman,
When thy starry waves are sleeping,
Sleeping in the fond embraces
Of the summer moon's soft light;
When thy waters seem to listen,
To the blue Rhone, sadly weeping
As she parts from thee forever,
Murmuring tenderly, " Good-night! "

Thou art glorious when the morning,
Nature's radiant evangel,
Lays her cheek upon thy bosom,
With her tresses all undone;
When the snowy mists that bound thee,
Like the drapery of an angel,
Are woven into rainbows
In the pathway of the sun.

Thou art peerless when the twilight
Of a quiet summer even
Binds the Eastern sky with shadows,
As the day dies in the West;
When the gold and crimson curtains
Looped around the gates of heaven
And the pathways of the angels,
Are painted on thy breast.

Thou art lovely when the vine-hills
Are pictured in thy waters,
Or when storm-winds from the Jura
Crown thy waves with starry foam;
And the children of thy valleys,
Old Helvetia's sons and daughters,
When they leave thee, lake of beauty,
Never find another home.

But I dwell by thee a stranger,
Of my exile grown so weary,
That my soul is sick with sighing,
Waiting, longing to depart;
And the music of thy voices
Makes me homesick, makes me dreary.
Oh, I can not learn to love thee
While my own land fills my heart!

I have climbed the snow-capped mountains,
Sailed on many a storied river,
And brushed the dust of ages
From gray monuments sublime;
I have seen the grand old pictures
That the world enshrines forever,
And the statues that the masters
Left along the paths of Time.

But my pilgrim feet are weary,
And my spirit dim with dreaming
Where the long, dead past has written
Misty, hieroglyphic lore;
In a land whose pulses slumber,
Or only beat in seeming,
Where the pathway of the Caesars
Is a ruin evermore.

Bear me back, O mighty ocean!
From this Old World, gray and gory,
To the forests and the prairies
Far beyond thy stormy waves,
To the land that Freedom fostered
To gigantic, strength and glory,
To my home-land with its loved ones,
And its unforgotten graves.

Give me back my little cottage,
And the dear old trees I planted,
And the common, simple blossoms
That bloomed around my door,
And the old, familiar home-songs
That my children's voices chanted,
And the few who used to love me —
And my heart will ask no more.