2.

And peasant girls, with deep blue eyes,
And hands which offer early flowers,

Walk smiling o'er this paradise ;
Above, the frequent feudal towers
Through green leaves lift their walls of gray,
And many a rock which steeply lours,
And noble arch in proud decay,

Look o'er this vale of vintage-bowers;

But one thing want these banks of Rhine,— Thy gentle hand to clasp in mine!

3.

I send the lilies given to me;

Though long before thy hand they touch,
I know that they must wither'd be,
But yet reject them not as such;
For I have cherish'd them as dear,
Because they yet may meet thine eye,
And guide thy soul to mine even here,
When thou behold'st them drooping nigh,
And know'st them gather'd by the Rhine,
And offer'd from my heart to thine!

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 be battled to re

sume.

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. (12)

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

rain

On 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,

hose fertile bounties here extend to all, springing o'er thy banks, though Empires near them fall.

LXII.

ut these recede. Above me are the Alps,
he palaces of Nature, whose vast walls
Iave 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 Unsepulchred they roam'd, and shriek'd each wandering ghost. (14)

LXIV.

While Waterloo with Canne'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 (15) 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;