Land of mountain, lake and river,
Waterfalls, and rushing streams
By the wayside where the cattle
Gather with their bells a-ringing,
In the day's departing beams.
Land of glorious dawns and sunsets,
Glowing shades of every hue,
Mists enchanted, floating, rising,
Fine-spun softness, tints Olympian,
Regal purple, virgin blue.
Tinkling zither, echoing jodel,
Horns that loudly hail the morn
From the upland's stony pathways
Where the snowline meets the outposts
Of the forest, sparse and lorn.
Nether tracts by sunlight heated,
Show the vines in serried rows,
Basking through the drowsy summer
Till their rich and generous vintage
From the wine-press redly flows.
Land of mountain peaks stupendous,
Lakes that fade to meet the sky!
Land for gods, for dreaming poets,
Fit for men of soaring greatness,
Sons of gifted ancestry.
Gods I found not, neither poets,
Only little men who toil
To supply the passing stranger,
Bound upon the wheel of pleasure,
With the produce of the soil.
What would Bonivard or Calvin
Think of you, my little men,
With your minds on money turning,
While you strain with itching fingers
Fast the golden calf to pen?
Yet I love your honest peasants
Dwelling on the mountain slope,
Slow and stolid, yet the children
Of the spirit born of freedom,
Of the patience born of hope.
For among these humble toilers,
From the grasping instinct free,
Still we find the cheerful-hearted,
Earnest, honest Switzer people
With the old simplicity.