2. And peasant girls, with deep blue eyes, Walk smiling o'er this paradise ; 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, 4. The river nobly foams and flows, Could thy dear eyes in following mine Still sweeten more these banks of Rhine! LVI. By Coblentz, on a rise of gentle ground, Crowning the summit of the verdant mound; 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 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! The brilliant, fair, and soft,-the glories of old days. LXI. The negligently grand, the fruitful bloom 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, Of cold sublimity, where forms and falls How Earth may pierce to Heaven, yet leave vain man below. LXIII. But ere these matchless heights I dare to scan, Here Burgundy bequeath'd his tombless host, 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, 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 Yet still with consciousness; and there it stands 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; |