Page:Landon in Literary Gazette 1823.pdf/121

120 Literary Gazette 18th October 1823, Page 667

ORIGINAL POETRY. FRAGMENT.

----------A solitude Of green and silent beauty, just a home Where I could wish to weep my life away In utter loneliness, and never more Hear human voice, or look on human face. It is a secret place among the hills: Little and dark the valley lies below, And not a taint of earth is on the air, Which the lip drinks pure as the stream whose source Is hidden here,—large rocks have girthed it in; All palaces for the eagle are their sides, Safe or far safer than a sanctuary,— For even that, though shielded by God's name, Man holds not sacred. Here at least his power Is neither felt nor feared. The chamois rests When harassed, as the powerless ever are; It flies before the hunter. Small as still, A skilful archer's bow would send the shaft Across its utmost boundary, and half Is covered with dark pines, which in the spring Send forth sweet odours, even as they felt As parents do, rejoicing o'er their children In the green promise of their youthful shoots, The spreading of their fresh and fragrant leaves. The other part is thinly scattered o'er With dwarf oaks, stinted both in leaves and growth. And in the midst there are two stately firs, The one dark in its hoary foliage, like A warrior armed for battle; but the next Has lost its leafy panoply, the bark Stripped from the trunk, the boughs left black and bare By some fierce storm to which it would not bend,— Like a high spirit, proud, though desolate.