Page images
PDF
EPUB

4.

The river nobly foams and flows,

The charm of this enchanted ground,
And all its thousand turns disclose
Some fresher beauty varying round:

The haughtiest breast its wish might bound
Through life to dwell delighted here;

Nor could on earth a spot be found
To nature and to me so dear,

Could thy dear eyes in following mine
Still sweeten more these banks of Rhine!

LVI.

By Coblentz, on a rise of gentle ground,
There is a small and simple pyramid,
Crowning the summit of the verdant mound;
Beneath its base are heroes' ashes hid,

Our enemy's, but let not that forbid
Honour to Marceau! o'er whose early tomb
Tears, big tears, gush'd from the rough soldier's lid,
Lamenting and yet envying such a doom,

Falling for France, whose rights he battled to resume.

LVII.

Brief, brave, and glorious was his young career,His mourners were two hosts, his friends and foes; And fitly may the stranger lingering here Pray for his gallant spirit's bright repose; For he was freedom's champion, one of those, The few in number, who had not o'erstept The charter to chastise which she bestows On such as wield her weapons; he had kept The whiteness of his soul, and thus men o'er him wept."

LVIII.

Here Ehrenbreitstein, 13 with her shatter'd wall Black with the miner's blast, upon her height Yet shows of what she was, when shell and ball Rebounding idly on her strength did light; A tower of victory! from whence the flight Of baffled foes was watch'd along the plain: But peace destroy'd what war could never blight, And laid those proud roofs bare to summer's rainOn which the iron shower for years had pour'd in vain.

LIX.

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.

LX.

Adieu to thee again! a vain adieu!

There can be no farewell to scene like thine;
The mind is colour'd 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,

LXI.

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 fall.

LXII.

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.

LXIII.

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 conquer'd on that plain;
Here Burgundy bequeath'd his tombless host,
A bony heap, through ages to remain,

Themselves their monument; the Stygian coast

[ocr errors]

Unsepulchred they roam'd, and shriek'd each wandering ghost.'

LXIV.

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.

LXV.

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-bewilder'd 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 5 Aventicum, hath strew'd her subject lands.

LXVI.

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, 16

LXVII.

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,'7
Imperishably pure beyond all things below.

LXVIII.

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.

LXIX.

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.

VOL. I.

12

« ՆախորդըՇարունակել »