The League of the Alps (and Other Poems)/Alpine Song

by Johann Ludwig Tieck

ALPINE SONG.

  What dost thou here, brave Swiss?Forgett’st thou thus thy native clime,The lovely land of thy bright spring-time?The land of thy home, with its free delights,And fresh green valleys, and mountain-heights?  Can the stranger’s yield thee bliss?

  What welcome cheers thee now?Dar’st thou lift thine eye to gaze around?Where are the peaks, with their snow-wreaths crown’d?Where is the song, on the wild winds borne,Or the ringing peal of the joyous horn,  Or the peasant’s fearless brow?

  But thy spirit is far away!Where a greeting waits thee in kindred eyes,Where the white Alps look through the sunny skies,With the low Senn^[1] cabins, and pastures free,And the sparkling blue of the Glacier-sea,  And the summits cloth’d with day.

  Back, noble child of Tell!Back to the wild, and the silent glen,And the frugal board of peasant-men:Dost thou seek the friend, the lov’d one here?—Away! not a true Swiss heart is near,  Against thine own to swell!

 

1. See Note (1) to “The League of the Alps.”