With such surroundings than the puny form

Of insignificant, conceited man.

And interspersed amid these solemn peaks

Lie many a pleasant vale and grassy slope,

Besprinkled with the drooping columbine,

And fragrant growths of all harmonious tints,

Whose variegated colors punctuate

Grandeur with beauty, and fearless, bloom

In the forbidding shadow of the cliffs,

And to the margin of the snowy combs

Which still resist the sun's persuasive ray.

A lakelet, cool, pellucid and serene,

Fed by the drippings from eternal snows,

Lies like a mirror 'neath a frowning cliff,

Or as a gem, majestically ensconced

In diadem of crag and pinnacle.

Down towards the distant valley's sultry clime,

Both solitary, and in straggling groups;

In solid phalanx, rigid and compact;

In labyrinth of branches interspread,

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