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
We may deplore and struggle with the coil,
In wretched interchange of wrong for wrong
Midst a contentious world, striving where none are
strong.

LXX.

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 anchor'd ne'er shall

be.

LXXI.

Is it not better, then, to be alone,

And love Earth only for its earthly sake?
By the blue rushing of the arrowy Rhone,1
Or the pure bosom of its nursing lake,

1 The colour of the Rhone at Geneva is blue, to a depth of tint which I have never seen equalled in water, salt or fresh, except in the Mediterranean and Archipelago.-[ See Don Juan, c. xiv. st. 87. for a beautiful comparison:

"There was no great disparity of years,

Though much in temper; but they never clash'd:
They moved like stars united in their spheres,
Or like the Rhone by Leman's waters wash'd,

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?

LXXII.

I live not in myself, but I become

Portion of that around me; and to me
High mountains are a feeling 1, 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.

LXXIII.

And thus I am absorb'd, and this is life;
I look upon the peopled desert past,
As on a place of agony and strife,
Where, for some sin, to sorrow I was cast,

Where mingled and yet separate appears
The river from the lake, all bluely dash'd
Through the serene and placid glassy deep,
Which fain would lull its river child to sleep."-]

["Mr. Hobhouse and myself are just returned from a journey of lakes and mountains. We have been to the Grindelwald, and the Jungfrau, and stood on the summit of the Wengen Alp; and seen torrents of 900 feet in fall, and glaciers of all dimensions; we have heard shepherds' pipes, and avalanches, and looked on the clouds foaming up from the valleys below us like the spray of the ocean of hell. Chamouni, and that which it inherits, we saw a month ago; but, though Mont Blanc is higher, it is not equal in wildness to the Jungfrau, the Eighers, the Shreckhorn, and the Rose Glaciers."- B. Letters, Sept. 1816.]

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.

LXXIV.

And when, at length, the mind shall be all free
From what it hates in this degraded form,
Reft of its carnal life, save what shall be
Existent happier in the fly and worm,—
When elements to elements conform,
And dust is as it should be, shall I not

Feel all I see, less dazzling, but more warm?
The bodiless thought? the Spirit of each spot?
Of which, even now, I share at times the immortal lot?

LXXV.

Are not the mountains, waves, and skies, a part
Of me and of my soul, as I of them?

Is not the love of these deep in my heart
With a pure passion? should I not contemn
All objects, if compared with thee? and stem
A tide of suffering, rather than forego

Such feelings for the hard and worldly phlegm
Of those whose eyes are only turn'd below,

Gazing upon the ground, with thoughts which dare not glow?

LXXVI.

But this is not my theme; and I return
To that which is immediate, and require
Those who find contemplation in the urn,
To look on One, whose dust was once all fire,
A native of the land where I respire

The clear air for a while — a passing guest,
Where he became a being,--whose desire
Was to be glorious; 't was a foolish quest,
The which to gain and keep, he sacrificed all rest.

LXXVII.

Here the self-torturing sophist, wild Rousseau, 1
The apostle of affliction, he who threw
Enchantment over passion, and from woe
Wrung overwhelming eloquence, first drew

The breath which made him wretched; yet he knew
How to make madness beautiful, and cast

O'er erring deeds and thoughts a heavenly hue 2
Of words, like sunbeams, dazzling as they past

The eyes, which o'er them shed tears feelingly and fast.

1["I have traversed all Rousseau's ground with the Héloïse' before me, and am struck to a degree that I cannot express with the force and accuracy of his descriptions, and the beauty of their reality. Meillerie, Clarens, and Vevay, and the Château de Chillon, are places of which I shall say little; because all I could say must fall short of the impressions they stamp."- B. Letters.]

2 ["It is evident that the impassioned parts of Rousseau's romance had made a deep impression upon the feelings of the noble poet. The enthusiasm expressed by Lord Byron is no small tribute to the power possessed by Jean Jacques over the passions and, to say truth, we needed some such evidence; for, though almost ashamed to avow the truth, still, like the barber of Midas, we must speak or die, - we have never been able to feel the interest or discover the merit of this far-famed performance. That there is much eloquence in the letters we readily admit: there lay Rousseau's strength. But his lovers, the celebrated St. Preux and Julie, have, from the earliest moment we have heard the tale (which we well remember), down to the present hour, totally failed to interest us. There might be some constitutional hardness of heart; but like Lance's pebble-hearted cur, Crab, we remained dry-eyed while all wept around us. And still, on resuming the volume, even now, we can see little in the loves of these two tiresome pedants to interest our feelings for either of them. To state our opinion in language (see Burke's Reflections) much better than our own, we are unfortunate enough to regard this far-famed history of philosophical gallantry as an 'unfashioned, indelicate, sour, gloomy, ferocious medley of pedantry and lewdness; of metaphysical speculations, blended with the coarsest sensuality.””. SIR WALTER SCOTT.]

LXXVIII.

His love was passion's essence—as a tree
On fire by lightning; with ethereal flame
Kindled he was, and blasted; for to be
Thus, and enamour'd, were in him the same.
But his was not the love of living dame,
Nor of the dead who rise upon our dreams,
But of ideal beauty, which became

In him existence, and o'erflowing teems
Along his burning page, distemper'd though

LXXIX.

This breathed itself to life in Julie, this
Invested her with all that's wild and sweet;
This hallow'd, too, the memorable kiss 1

seems.

Which every morn his fever'd lip would greet,

From hers, who but with friendship his would meet; But to that gentle touch, through brain and breast Flash'd the thrill'd spirit's love-devouring heat; In that absorbing sigh perchance more blest Than vulgar minds may be with all they seek possest. 2

1 This refers to the account in his "Confessions" of his passion for the Comtesse d'Houdetot (the mistress of St. Lambert), and his long walk every morning, for the sake of the single kiss which was the common salutation of French acquaintance. Rousseau's description of his feelings on this occasion may be considered as the most passionate, yet not impure, description and expression of love that ever kindled into words; which, after all, must be felt, from their very force, to be inadequate to the delineation: a painting can give no sufficient idea of the ocean.

2 ["Lord Byron's character of Rousseau is drawn with great force, great power of discrimination, and great eloquence. I know not that he says any thing which has not been said before; - but what he says issues, apparently, from the recesses of his own mind It is a little laboured, which, possibly, may be caused by the form of the stanza into which it was necessary to throw it; but it cannot be doubted that the poet felt a sympathy for the enthusiastic tenderness of Rousseau's genius, which he could not have recognised with such extreme fervour, except from a consciousness of having at least_occasionally experienced similar emotions." SIR E. BRYDGES.]