Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, LAKE LEMAN AND CHILLON, by HENRY MORFORD


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

LAKE LEMAN AND CHILLON, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: At the old genevan wharf she lay
Last Line: By a guest with a bad digestion!
Subject(s): Alps; Chillon Castle, Switzerland; Geneva (lake), Switzerland; Mountains; Leman, Lake; Hills; Downs (great Britain)


AT the old Genevan wharf she lay,
Where the Jardin Anglais looks on the bay, --
That steamer small, with a name so regal:
Lake Leman was tempting blue, that day,
And as part of her brood we sailed away, --
Our national totem, -- "L'Aigle."

Has the world of travel a purer joy
Than the ramparts grim of old Savoy,
As that day we sailed apast and down them? --
Peak upon peak rising high, more high,
And some with their heads that reached the sky, --
With stern Mont Blanc to crown them?

With Jura's steeps on the other side
Of that lake with the dangerous placid tide;
And below, to the edge, the green hills sloping:
On one hand the mother, tender-eyed,
On the other the father, high in pride,
O'er their blue-eyed darling stooping!

With Beau Rivage, with sweet Lausanne,
With the hostel named for "milord Biron,"
Where he heard Childe Harold's echoing thunder:
One feast to the eye, sailing on and on,
Till the cliffs hung dark over old Chillon,
With the castle nestling under!

Time has gently dealt with the stern old pile,
And few the stones that have dropped erewhile
From the architect's featly and graceful shaping:
Though behind it a railway comes to spoil
The Past, with a hint of modern toil
And a means for romance escaping.

Dark rise the old turrets, -- dark, yet fair.
Round tower in graceful blending with square,
And here a tall keep over all arisen;
Till the gazer thinks what a fortune rare
For a limited space to linger there,
Even calling one's home a prison!

And fair as ever the sun-rays fall
On the lapping waters under the wall;
And the view across still keeps its glory, --
Over the lake to the ramparts tall,
And the great snow-mountains crowning all
With that presence mighty as hoary.

But what dearer view was within embraced,
When over the drawbridge height we paced,
Under the archways gray and moulding,
And stood in the midst of that stony waste
Where the hand of genius one mark has placed
For the ages' long beholding,

Savoy's stern Dukes rule here no more:
There is silence on that presence-floor
Where herald and king bandied feudal manners;
And the free Swiss Cantons there keep in store
Of rusty firelocks many a score
And a dozen of red-cross banners.

And deeper within comes room on room,
Of still deepening infamy and gloom,
Beneath and above the waters' level, --
Where the victims of old found cruel doom,
The prison a scaffold, the lake a tomb,
And the headsman a hooded devil.

And then, -- the chamber of Bonnivard,
Of victims at once the evilest-starred,
And the luckiest far, that, one summer morning
The English lord saw his place of guard,
And the old renown of the castle marred
With a glory that came sans warning.

For who now visits the dungeons old,
But to see those "seven pillars of Gothic mould,"
With the one still bearing the broken fetters,
And the window 'neath which the blue lake rolled,
And through which the birds of lost freedom told,
As if they were wrong's abettors?

And what, when the old pile tumbles down,
Will give to its stones their best renown?
Some puzzling and dim historic question?
No! -- the story-in-rhyme, that makes its crown,
One day at Veytaux-Chillon set down
By a guest with a bad digestion!





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net