But none unite in one attaching maze | |
580 | 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, | |
585 | 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 | |
590 | 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 | |
595 | 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, | |
600 | 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, | |
605 | A bony heap, through ages to remain, |
Themselves their monument; — the Stygian coast | |
Unsepulchred they roam’d, and shriek’d each wandering ghost. | |
LXIV | |
While Waterloo with Cannæ’s carnage vies, | |
Morat and Marathon twin names shall stand; | |
610 | 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 | |
615 | 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, | |
620 | 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, | |
625 | Levell’d Aventicum, |
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. | |
630 | 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. | |
LXVII | |
635 | 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 | |
640 | Should be, and shall, survivor of its woe, |
And from its immortality look forth | |
In the sun’s face, like yonder Alpine snow, | |
Imperishably pure beyond all things below. | |
LXVIII | |
Lake Leman woos me with its crystal face, | |
645 | 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; | |
650 | 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, | |
655 | 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, | |
660 | 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, | |
665 | 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 | |
670 | Whose bark drives on and on, and anchor’d ne’er shall be. |
LXXI | |
It is not better, then, to be alone, | |
And love Earth only for its earthly sake? | |
By the blue rushing of the arrowy Rhone, | |
Or the pure bosom of its nursing lake, | |
675 | 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 | |
680 | 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 | |
685 | 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; | |
690 | I look upon the peopled desert 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, | |
695 | 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, | |
700 | 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? | |
705 | 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 | |
710 | 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 turn’d below, | |
715 | 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, | |
720 | 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, |