Explore "The Swiss Peasant" by Mary Shelley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Why is the mind of man so apt to be swayed by contraries? why does the imagination forever paint the impossible in glittering tints, and the hearts of wayward mortals cling, with the greatest tenacity, to what, eel-like, is bent on escaping from their grasp? Why -- to bring the matter home -- is solitude abhorrent to me, now that I enjoy it in perfection? I have apostrophized the coy nymph in ballrooms, when the bright lamps of heaven were shamed by brighter earthstars, and lamented her absence at a picnic party, where the nightingale was silenced by the fiddle.
And now, O solitude! I abjure thee, in thy fitting temple -- in Switzerland -- among cloud-piercing mountains, by the resounding waves of the isle-surrounding lake. I am beside the waters of Uri -- where Tell lived -- in Brunen, where the Swiss patriots swore to die for freedom. It rains -- magic word to destroy the spell to which these words give rise -- the clouds envelop the hills -- the white mists veil the ravines -- there is a roar and a splash in my ears -- and now and then the vapours break and scatter themselves, and I see something dark between, which is the hoar side of a dark precipice, but which might as well be the turf stack or old wall that bounded Cumberland's view as he wrote the Wheel of Fortune.