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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-entailed Corruption; they no land
Doomed 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-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,

Levelled (15) Aventicum, hath strewed 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 her's 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, (17) 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 cherished than of old,
Ere mingling with the herd had penned 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. 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 anchored 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, (18
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, doomed 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, 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,

Classed 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 absorbed, 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.
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?

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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 these? and stem
A tide of suffering, rather than forego
Such feelings for the hard and worldly phlegm
Of those whose eyes are only turned 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; 'twas a foolish quest,
The which to gain and keep, he sacrificed all rest.
LXXVII.

Here the self-torturing sophist, wild Rousseau,'
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
Of words, like sunbeams, dazzling as they past
The eyes which o'er them shed tears feelingly and fast.
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 enamoured, were in him the same.
But his was not the love of living dame,
Nor of the dead that rise upon our dreams,
But of ideal beauty, which became

In him existence, and o'erflowing teems

Along his burning page, distempered though it seems.
LXXIX.

This breathed itself to life in Júlie, this

Invested her with all that's wild and sweet;
This hallowed, too, the memorable kiss

Which every morn his fevered lip would greet,
From her's who but with friendship his would meet;
But to that gentle touch, through brain and breast
Flashed the thrilled spirit's love devouring heat;
In that absorbing sigh perchance more blest,
Than vulgar minds may be with all they seek possest. (19)

LXXX.

His life was one long war with self-sought foes
Or friends by him self-banished; for his mind
Had grown Suspicion's sanctuary, and chose
For its own cruel sacrifice, the kind,

'Gainst whom he raged with fury strange and blind.
But he was phrenzied,-wherefore, who may know?
Since cause might be which skill could never find;
But he was phrenzied by disease or woe,

To that worst pitch of all, which wears a reasoning show.
LXXXI.

For then he was inspired, and from him came,
As from the Pythian's mystic cave of yore,
Those oracles which set the world in flame,
Nor ceased to burn till kingdoms were no more.
Did he not this for France? which lay before
Bowed to the inborn tyranny of years?

Broken and trembling, to the yoke she bore,
Till by the voice of him and his compeers,

Roused up to too much wrath which follows o'ergrown
LXXXII.

They made themselves a fearful monument!

The wreck of old opinions-things which grew

fears?

Breathed from the birth of Time: the veil they rent
And what behind it lay, all earth shall view.
But good with ill they also overthrew,

Leaving but ruins, wherewith to rebuild
Upon the same foundation, and renew

Dungeons and thrones, which the same hour re-filled, As heretofore, because ambition was self-willed. LXXXIII.

But this will not endure, nor be endured!

Mankind have felt their strength, and made it felt.
They might have used it better, but, allured
By their new vigour, sternly have they dealt

On one another; pity ceased to melt
With her own natural charities. But they,
Who in oppression's darkness caved had dwelt,
They were not eagles, nourished with the day;

What marvel then, at times, if they mistook their prey?

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