With many windings, through the vale:--Look back!
Lo! where it comes like an Eternity,
As if to sweep down all things in its track,
Charming the eye with dread,--a matchless cataract,[452]

LXXII.

Horribly beautiful! but on the verge,
From side to side, beneath the glittering morn,
An Iris[453] sits, amidst the infernal surge,
Like Hope upon a death-bed, and, unworn
Its steady dyes, while all around is torn
By the distracted waters, bears serene
Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn:
Resembling, 'mid the torture of the scene,
Love watching Madness with unalterable mien.

LXXIII.

Once more upon the woody Apennine--
The infant Alps, which--had I not before
Gazed on their mightier Parents, where the pine
Sits on more shaggy summits, and where roar[nh]
The thundering Lauwine[454]--might be worshipped more;
But I have seen the soaring Jungfrau rear[ni]
Her never-trodden snow, and seen the hoar
Glaciers of bleak Mont Blanc both far and near--
And in Chimari heard the Thunder-Hills of fear,

LXXIV.

Th' Acroceraunian mountains of old name;
And on Parnassus seen the Eagles fly
Like Spirits of the spot, as 'twere for fame.
For still they soared unutterably high:
I've looked on Ida with a Trojan's eye;
Athos--Olympus--AEtna.--Atlas--made
These hills seem things of lesser dignity;
All, save the lone Soracte's height, displayed
Not _now_ in snow, which asks the lyric Roman's aid

LXXV.

For our remembrance, and from out the plain
Heaves like a long-swept wave about to break,
And on the curl hangs pausing: not in vain
May he, who will, his recollections rake,
And quote in classic raptures, and awake
The hills with Latian echoes--I abhorred
Too much, to conquer for the Poet's sake,[455]
The drilled dull lesson, forced down word by word
In my repugnant youth,[456] with pleasure to record

LXXVI.

Aught that recalls the daily drug which turned
My sickening memory; and, though Time hath taught
My mind to meditate what then it learned,[nj]
Yet such the fixed inveteracy wrought[nk]
By the impatience of my early thought,