Lauterbrunnen

Thomas Gold Appleton

I.

A LOWLY hut, stone piled and redly stained

With all of accident cold years have brought;

A mother and her child in silent thought

Sitting beside the river scarce contained

From kissing with its gray and brattling foam

Their feet, where monstrous over their lone home

Yon awful Alp in battlemented wall

Rears his sad forehead, from whose piny crest

The torrent springs to light and happier life!

It spurns the cloud where the unheeded call

Of birds is joyous mid the blinding strife

Of avalanches in the still deep noon,

Veiling the pines, and the convulséd tune

Of gray streams hushing in their arrowy fall.

 

II.

A temple for the Father, which his hand

Hath reared for these his lowliest worshippers,

Arched with Heaven’s sapphire and with whispering firs,

Garnishing these walls sublime which ever stand

With many-colored shape of column fair,

And granite peak dim in the glittering air!

A lowly flock who need no pealing swell

Of choristers within quaint minster aisles,

Where God hath shamed all boastful human piles,

And whose cloud swings their awful Sabbath bell;

While silently they bow the thankful eye,

And kneel to Him whose hymn is there so well

Sung by his torrents leaping from the sky;

Thus live they, shut as in a holy cell,

Gracing their simple lives with natural piety.