Calm on Lake Leman

From “Childe Harold,” Canto III.   CLEAR, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake,   With the wild world I dwelt in, is a thing   Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake   Earth’s troubled waters for a purer spring.   This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing   To waft me from distraction; once I loved   Torn ocean’s roar, but thy soft murmuring   Sounds sweet as if a sister’s voice reproved, That I with stern delights should e’er have been so moved.   It is the hush of night, and all between   Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear,   Mellowed and mingling, yet distinctly seen,   Save darkened Jura, whose capt heights appear   Precipitously steep; and drawing near,   There breathes a living fragrance from the shore,   Of flowers yet fresh with childhood; on the ear   Drops the light drip of the suspended oar, Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more:   He is an evening reveller, who makes   His life an infancy, and sings his fill;   At intervals, some bird from out the brakes   Starts into voice a moment, then is still.   There seems a floating whisper on the hill,   But that is fancy; for the starlight dews   All silently their tears of love instil,   Weeping themselves away, till they infuse Deep into Nature’s breast the spirit of her hues.