Adieu to thee, fair Rhine! How long delighted The stranger fain would linger on his way! Thine is a scene alike where souls united Or lonely contemplation thus might stray; And could the ceaseless vultures cease to prey On self-condemning bosoms, it were here, Where Nature, nor too sombre nor too gay, Wild but not rude, awful yet not austere, Is to the mellow Earth as Autumn to the year.
Adieu to thee again! a vain adieu!
There can be no farewell to scene like thine; The mind is coloured by thy every hue; And if reluctantly the eyes resign
Their cherish'd gaze upon thee, lovely Rhine! 'Tis with the thankful glance of parting praise; More mighty spots may rise-more glaring shine, But none unite in one attaching maze
The brilliant, fair, and soft,-the glories of old days,
The negligently grand, the fruitful bloom Of coming ripeness, the white city's sheen, The rolling stream, the precipice's gloom, The forest's growth, and Gothic walls between, The wild rocks shaped as they had turrets been In mockery of man's art; and these withal A race of faces happy as the scene, Whose fertile bounties here extend to all,
Still springing o'er thy banks, though empires near them f
But these recede. Above me are the Alps, The palaces of Nature, whose vast walls Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps, And throned eternity in icy halls
Of cold sublimity, where forms and falls The avalanche-the thunderbolt of snow! All that expands the spirit, yet appals, Gather around these summits, as to show
How Earth may pierce to Heaven, yet leave vain man below.
But ere these matchless heights I dare to scan, There is a spot should not be pass'd in vain,- Morat! the proud, the patriot field! where man May gaze on ghastly trophies of the slain, Nor blush for those who conquered on that plain; Here Burgundy bequeath'd his tombless host, A bony heap, through ages to remain,
Themselves their monument ;-the Stygian coast Unsepulchred they roam'd, and shriek'd each wandering ghost.
While Waterloo with Canna's carnage vies, Morat and Marathon twin names shall stand; They were true Glory's stainless victories, Won by the unambitious heart and hand Of a proud, brotherly, and civic band, All unbought champions in no princely cause Of vice-entail'd corruption; they no land Doom'd to bewail the blasphemy of laws Making kings' rights divine, by some Draconic clause.
By a lone wall a lonelier column rears A gray and grief-worn aspect of old days; "Tis the last remnant of the wreck of years, And looks as with the wild-bewildered gaze Of one to stone converted by amaze,
Yet still with consciousness; and there it stands Making a marvel that it not decays,
When the coeval pride of human hands, Levell❜d Aventicum, hath strewed her subject lands.
And there-oh! sweet and sacred be the name!- Julia-the daughter, the devoted-gave
Her youth to Heaven; her heart, beneath a claim Nearest to Heaven's, broke o'er a father's grave. Justice is sworn 'gainst tears, and hers would crave The life she lived in; but the judge was just, And then she died on him she could not save. Their tomb was simple, and without a bust, And held within their urn one mind, one heart, one dust.3
But these are deeds which should not pass away, And names that must not wither, though the earth Forgets her empires with a just decay,
The enslavers and the enslaved, their death and birth; The high, the mountain-majesty of worth
Should be, and shall, survivor of its woe, And from its immortality look forth In the sun's face, like yonder Alpine snow, Imperishably pure beyond all things below.
Lake Leman woos me with its crystal face, The mirror where the stars and mountains view The stillness of their aspect in each trace
Its clear depth yields of their far height and hue : There is too much of man here, to look through With a fit mind the might which I behold; But soon in me shall loneliness renew
Thoughts hid, but not less cherish'd than of old, Ere mingling with the herd had penn'd me in their fold.
To fly from, need not be to hate, mankind; All are not fit with them to stir and toil, Nor is it discontent to keep the mind Deep in its fountain, lest it overboil
In the hot throng, where we become the spoil Of our infection, till too late and long
We may deplore and struggle with the coil,
In wretched interchange of wrong for wrong Midst a contentious world, striving where none are strong.
There, in a moment, we may plunge our years
In fatal penitence, and in the blight
Of our own soul, turn all our blood to tears, And colour things to come with hues of Night; The race of life becomes a hopeless flight To those that walk in darkness: on the sea, The boldest steer but where their ports invite, But there are wanderers o'er eternity,
Whose bark drives on and on, and anchored ne'er shall be.
Is it not better, then, to be alone, And love Earth only for its earthly sake? By the blue rushing of the arrowy Rhone, Or the pure bosom of its nursing lake, Which feeds it as a mother who doth make A fair but froward infant her own care, Kissing its cries away as these awake;— Is it not better thus our lives to wear,
Than join the crushing crowd, doom'd to inflict or bear?
I live not in myself, but I become
Portion of that around me; and to me, High mountains are a feeling, but the hum Of human cities torture: I can see Nothing to loathe in nature, save to be A link reluctant in a fleshly chain,
Class'd among creatures, when the soul can flee, And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain Of Ocean, or the stars, mingle, and not in vain.
And thus I am absorb'd, and this is life: I look upon the peopled desart past,
As on a place of agony and strife, Where, for some sin, to sorrow I was cast, To act and suffer, but remount at last With a fresh pinion; which I feel to spring, Though young, yet waxing vigorous, as the blast Which it would cope with, on delighted wing,
Spurning the clay-cold bonds which round our being cling.
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