many a job could he from Night's soft presence glean.

Feeling himself 'the most unfit of men to herd with man,' he is happy
only with Nature:

Once more upon the waters! yet once more!
And the waves bound beneath me as a steed
That knows his rider. Welcome to the roar!
Swift be their guidance, wheresoe'er it lead.

Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends;
Where rolled the ocean, thereon was his home;
Where a blue sky and glowing clime extends,
He had the passion and the power to roam;
The desert, forest, cavern, breaker's foam,
Were unto him companionship; they spake
A mutual language, clearer than the tome
Of his land's tongue, which he would oft forsake
For Nature's pages glass'd by sunbeams on the lake.

Again:

I live not in myself, but I become
Portion of that around me, and to me
High mountains are a feeling, but the hum
Of human cities torture; I can see
Nothing to loathe in Nature save to be
A link reluctant in a fleshly chain,
Class'd among creatures, when the soul can flee,
And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain
Of ocean, or the stars, mingle, and not in vain.

Are not the mountains, waves, and skies a part
Of me and of my soul, as I of them?
Is not the love of these deep in my heart
With a pure passion? Should I not contemn
All objects, if compared with these?

Love of Nature was a passion with him, and when he looked

Upon the peopled desert past
As on a place of agony and strife,

mountains gave him a sense of freedom.

He praised the Rhine:

Where Nature, nor too sombre nor too gay,
Wild but not rude, awful yet not austere,
Is to the mellow earth as autumn to the year.

and far more the Alps:

Above me are the Alps,
The palaces of Nature, whose vast walls
Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps,
And throned eternity in icy halls
Of cold sublimity, where forms and falls
The avalanche, the thunderbolt of snow!
All that expands the spirit, yet appals,
Gather around these summits, as to shew
How Earth may pierce to Heaven, yet leave vain man below.

On the Lake of Geneva:

Ye stars which are the poetry of heaven...
All heaven and earth are still--though not in sleep,
But breathless, as we grow when feeling most;
And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep.
All heaven and earth are still: from the high host
Of stars, to the lull'd lake and mountain coast,