she crouched in fear? [12] 55
_That_ Silence, once in deathlike fetters bound,
Chains that were loosened only by the sound
Of holy rites chanted in measured round? [13]

--The voice of blasphemy the fane alarms,
The cloister startles at the gleam of arms. [14] 60
The [15] thundering tube the aged angler hears, [G]
Bent o'er the groaning flood that sweeps away his tears. [16]
Cloud-piercing pine-trees nod their troubled heads, [17]
Spires, rocks, and lawns a browner night o'erspreads;
Strong terror checks the female peasant's sighs, 65
And start the astonished shades at female eyes.
From Bruno's forest screams the affrighted jay,
And slow the insulted eagle wheels away.
A viewless flight of laughing Demons mock
The Cross, by angels planted [H] on the aerial rock. [18] 70
The "parting Genius" [J] sighs with hollow breath
Along the mystic streams of Life and Death.[K]
Swelling the outcry dull, that long resounds
Portentous through her old woods' trackless bounds,
Vallombre, [L] 'mid her falling fanes deplores 75
For ever broke, the sabbath of her bowers.

More pleased, my foot the hidden margin roves
Of Como, bosomed deep in chestnut groves.
No meadows thrown between, the giddy steeps
Tower, bare or sylvan, from the narrow deeps. 80
--To towns, whose shades of no rude noise [19] complain,
From ringing team apart [20] and grating wain--
To flat-roofed towns, that touch the water's bound,
Or lurk in woody sunless glens profound,
Or, from the bending rocks, obtrusive cling, 85
And o'er the whitened wave their shadows fling--
The pathway leads, as round the steeps it twines; [21]
And Silence loves its purple roof of vines.
The loitering traveller [22] hence, at evening, sees
From rock-hewn steps the sail between the trees; 90
Or marks, 'mid opening cliffs, fair dark-eyed maids
Tend the small harvest of their garden glades;
Or stops the solemn mountain-shades to view
Stretch o'er the pictured mirror broad and blue,
And track the yellow lights from steep to steep, 95
As up the opposing hills they slowly creep. [23]
Aloft, here, half a village shines, arrayed
In golden light; [24] half hides itself in shade:
While, from amid the darkened roofs, the spire,
Restlessly flashing, seems to mount like fir