Classic Poem

Green grow the Alpine pastures,
The avalanches cease;
The flocks ascend the mountains,
As yielding snows decrease.
When, by the South-wind melted,
The ice in pieces falls,
Your struggles fierce for freedom,
Ye Swiss! the scene recals.

Down foams the roaring Schächen
From yonder cloven height,
And rocks and pines are shivered
Before its headlong flight.
Its stream hath swamped the foot-bridge
That o'er the torrent hung,
And swept away the stripling
That on the plank had sprung.

A man was fast approaching
The foot-bridge, as it gave;
The grayhaired wanderer stays not,
But dives the lad to save,
Grips him with eagle-swiftness,
Seeks out a shallow bay;
The boy escapes the billow,
The man is whirled away!

But when ashore the body
Was drifted by the flood,
Around it men and women
In speechless sorrow stood;
As though a shock had cloven
The Rothstock's rocky bed,
One mouth (it seemed) shrieked loudly—
“Brave Tell—our Tell—is dead!”

Roved I o'er snows eternal,
A mountain-shepherd free,
Were I a daring sailor
O'er Uri's emerald sea;
And saw I Tell's dead body—
By heart-felt sorrow wrung,
My arms should fondly clasp him,
My lay should thus be sung:

“Thou wast the life of all men,
Now here thou liest dead;
Thy gray hair still is dripping
Around thy pallid head.
A ruddy boy stands near thee
Recovered from the stream,
And round thee, clothed in sunshine,
The land thou didst redeem.

The love that late within thee
For that poor boy did glow,
Once woke in thee the impulse
That laid the tyrant low.
Intent to save, thou knew'st not
Of slumber or dismay,
Or when thy locks were auburn,
Or when thy hair was gray.

Hadst thou in youth's full vigour
Plunged in this lad to save,
And hadst thou 'scaped in safety,
Not sunk beneath the wave,
We might from thence have augured
Thy future glorious deeds;
But now the less achievement
The greater one succeeds.

Although a nation's praises
Conspired thine ears to fill,
A faint appeal for succour
At once could reach them still.
That hero's breast is kindled
With freedom's purest glow,
Who, crowned with victory's garland,
Loves rather use than show.

In safety thou returnedst
From that destructive deed,
'Twas in a work of mercy
Thou couldst no longer speed;
'Twas not to save a people
Heav'n asked thy life's dear price,
But deemed thee for a stripling
A fitting sacrifice.

Where, by thine arrow stricken,
The ruthless Gessler fell,
A house of prayer stands open
Of God's revenge to tell.
But here where thou didst perish
A stripling's life to save,
A simple cross of stonework
Denotes thy humble grave.

All lands shall hear the story
How Switzerland was freed,
And tongues of famous poets
Shall celebrate thy deed;
But shepherds by the Schächen,
At purple eventide,
Shall tell the rocks around them
How nobly thou hast died.”