Oh we are on the mountain top The clouds float by in fleecy flock Heavy and dank, Around below A wilderness of turf and snow Scanty rock turf, or sandstone
Without a living thing, for there Not a bird clove the thin cold air With labouring wing, the very goat To such a height ascendeth not And if the clouds thick drapery
long white snowfields on each side Clasping the mountain breast, or heaped In high wreathed hills whence torrents leaped And gathering force, as downward
Rhines headlong swell And andhere and there a mouldring cross Of dark pine matted oer with moss Hung oer the precipice, to tell Where some benighted traveller fell.
Or where the avalanches leap Hurled down with its wild thunder sweep Him unexpecting, and to pray The passing traveller to stay And looking from the precipice,
Mid my own hills, and legend strange,
2
How from dark Stridens ridgy range,
3
One fell, upon a wintry day When snow wreaths white concealed his way And died, beside a small dark tarn
4
Oerlooked by crags, whose foreheads stern Shut in a little vale, a spot By man unknown and trodden not Green, and most beautiful, and lay, His bones there whitening many a day,
Though sun and rain might work their will From bird and wolf protected still For he had one companion, one, Watched oer him in the desert lone That faithful dog beside sat aye,
Baying the vulture from his prey,
a
Else moved not, slept not, stirred not, still, Oer lake and mountain, rock and hill Rung his short plaintive timid cry
b
his sorrowing call for aid Yet still beside the corse he staid And watched it moulder, and the day When three long months had past away It was discovered where it lay