icy spear
And shake my locks of snow!
When the avalanche forth like a tiger leaps,
How the vassal-mountains quiver!
And the storm that sweeps through the airy deeps
Makes the hoary pine-wood shiver!
Above them all, in a brighter air,
I lift my forehead proud and bare,
And the lengthened sweep of my forest-robe
Trails down to the low and captured globe,
Till its borders touch the dark green wave
In whose soundless depths my feet I lave.
The winds, unprisoned, around me blow,
And terrible tempests whirl the snow;
Rocks from their caverned beds are torn,
And the blasted forest to heaven is borne;
High through the din of the stormy band,
Like misty giants the mountains stand,
And their thunder-revel o'er-sounds the woe,
That cries from the desolate vales below!
I part the clouds with my lifted crown,
Till the sun-ray slants on the glaciers down,
And trembling men, in the valleys pale,
Rejoice at the gleam of my icy mail!

II.

I wear a crown of the sunbeam's gold,
With glacier-gems en my forehead old--
A monarch crowned by God!
What son of the servile earth may dare
Such signs of a regal power to wear,
While chained to her darkened sod?
I know of a nobler and grander lore
Than Time records on his crumbling pages,
And the soul of my solitude teaches more
Than the gathered deeds of perished ages!
For I have ruled since Time began
And wear no fetter made by man.
I scorn the coward and craven race
Who dwell around my mighty base,
For they leave the lessons I grandly gave
And bend to the yoke of the crouching slave.
I shout aloud to the chainless skies;
The stream through its falling foam replies,
And my voice, like the sound of the surging sea,
To the nations thunders: "_I am free!_"
I spoke to Tell when a tyrant's hand
Lay heavy and hard on his native land,
And the spirit whose glory from mine he won
Blessed the Alpine dwellers with Freedom's sun!
The student-boy on the Gmunden-plain
Heard my solemn voice, but he fought in vain;
I called from the crags of the Passeir-glen,
When the despot stood in my realm again,
And Hofer sprang at the proud command
And roused the men of the Tyrol land!

III.

I struggle up to the dim blue heaven,
From the world, far down in wh