Beautiful cloud! with folds so soft and fair, Swimming in the pure quiet air! Thy fleeces bathed in sunlight, while below Thy shadow o'er the vale moves slow;...
Fair insect! that, with threadlike legs spread out, And blood-extracting bill and filmy wing, Does murmur, as thou slowly sail'st about, In pitiless ears full many a plaintive thing,...
Thine eyes shall see the light of distant skies: Yet, COLE! thy heart shall bear to Europe's strand A living image of thy native land, Such as on thine own glorious canvas lies;...
Your peaks are beautiful, ye Apennines! In the soft light of these serenest skies; From the broad highland region, black with pines, Fair as the hills of Paradise they rise,...
When the firmament quivers with daylight's young beam, And the woodlands awaking burst into a hymn, And the glow of the sky blazes back from the stream, How the bright ones of heaven in the brightness grow dim....
Chains may subdue the feeble spirit, but thee, Tell, of the iron heart! they could not tame! For thou wert of the mountains; they proclaim The everlasting creed of liberty....