Part 20

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.

LVIII.

Here Ehrenbreitstein, with her shattered 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 watched along the plain; But Peace destroyed what War could never blight, And laid those proud roofs bare to Summer's rain-- On which the iron shower for years had poured 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, not 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 coloured by thy every hue; And if reluctantly the eyes resign Their cherished 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, Whose fertile bounties here extend to all, Still springing o'er thy banks, though empires near them fall.

LXII.

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 The avalanche--the thunderbolt of snow! All that expands the spirit, yet appals, Gathers 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 passed in vain,-- Morat! the proud, the patriot field! where man May gaze on ghastly trophies of the slain, Nor blush for those who conquered on that plain; Here Burgundy bequeathed his tombless host, A bony heap, through ages to remain, Themselves their monument;--the Stygian coast Unsepulchred they roamed, and shrieked each wandering ghost.

LXIV.

While Waterloo with Cannae'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 king's rights divine, by some Draconic clause.

LXV.

By a lone wall a lonelier column rears A grey 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 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 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.

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, 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 one 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.