A New Pilgrimage: Sonnet XXI

To Switzerland, the land of lakes and snow,
And ancient freedom of ancestral type,
And modern innkeepers, who cringe and bow,
And venal echoes, and Pans paid to pipe!
See, I am come. And here in vineyards, ripe
With sweet white grapes, I will sit down and read
Once more the loves of Rousseau, till I wipe
My eyes in tenderness for names long dead.
This is the birthplace of all sentiment,
The fount of modern tears. These hills in me
Stir what still lives of fancy reverent
For Mother Nature. Here Time's minstrelsy
Awoke, some century since, one sunny morn,
To find Earth fortunate, and Man forlorn.