ELSIE.

How awful, yet how beautiful!

PRINCE HENRY.

These are

The voices of the mountains! Thus they ope Their snowy lips, and speak unto each other, In the primeval language, lost to man.

ELSIE.

What land is this that spreads itself beneath us?

Italy! Italy!

PRINCE HENRY.

ELSIE.

Land of the Madonna!

How beautiful it is! It seems a garden

Of Paradise!

PRINCE HENRY.

Nay, of Gethsemane

To thee and me, of passion and of prayer!
Yet once of Paradise. Long years ago
I wandered as a youth among its bowers,

And never from my heart has faded quite Its memory, that, like a summer sunset, Encircles with a ring of purple light

All the horizon of my youth.

GUIDE.

O friends!

The days are short, the way before us long; We must not linger, if we think to reach The inn at Belinzona before vespers!

They pass on.

AT THE FOOT OF THE ALPS.

A halt under the trees at noon.

PRINCE HENRY.

HERE let us pause a moment in the trembling Shadow and sunshine of the road-side trees, And, our tired horses in a group assembling, Inhale long draughts of this delicious breeze. Our fleeter steeds have distanced our attend

ants;

They lag behind us with a slower pace;
We will await them under the green pendants
Of the great willows in this shady place.
Ho, Barbarossa! how thy mottled haunches
Sweat with this canter over hill and glade!

Stand still, and let these overhanging branches Fan thy hot sides and comfort thee with shade!

ELSIE.

What a delightful landscape spreads before us, Marked with a whitewashed cottage here and

there!

And, in luxuriant garlands drooping o'er us, Blossoms of grape-vines scent the sunny air.

PRINCE HENRY.

Hark! what sweet sounds are those, whose accents holy

Fill the warm noon with music sad and

sweet!

ELSIE.

It is a band of pilgrims, moving slowly

On their long journey, with uncovered feet.

PILGRIMS, chaunting the Hymn of St. Hildebert.

Me receptet Sion illa,

Sion David, urbs tranquilla,

Cujus faber auctor lucis,
Cujus portæ lignum crucis,

Cujus claves lingua Petri,

Cujus cives semper læti,

Cujus muri lapis vivus,

Cujus custos Rex festivus!

LUCIFER, as a Friar in the procession.

Here am I, too, in the pious band,

In the garb of a barefooted Carmelite dressed!
The soles of my feet are as hard and tanned
As the conscience of old Pope Hildebrand,

The Holy Satan, who made the wives
Of the bishops lead such shameful lives.
All day long I beat my breast,

And chaunt with a most particular zest
The Latin hymns, which I understand

Quite as well, I think, as the rest.

And at night such lodging in barns and sheds,

Such a hurly-burly in country inns,

Such a clatter of tongues in empty heads,