Selected Poems
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Some fresher beauty varying round:
530
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
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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,
540
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 he battled to resume.
LVII
545
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,
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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.1
LVIII
Here Ehrenbreitstein,1 with her shatter’d wall
555
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:
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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!
565
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,
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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;
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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
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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,
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A bony heap, through ages to remain,
Themselves their monument; — the Stygian coast
Unsepulchred they roam’d, and shriek’d each wandering ghost.1
LXIV
While Waterloo with Cannæ’s carnage vies,
Morat and Marathon twin names shall stand;
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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,
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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,
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Levell’d Aventicum,1 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.
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.1
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
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Should be, and shall, survivor of its woe,
And from its immortality look forth
In the sun’s face, like yonder Alpine snow,2
Imperishably pure beyond all things below.
LXVIII
Lake Leman woos me with its crystal face,
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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,1
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
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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,
The which to gain and keep, he sacrificed all rest.
LXXVII
725
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
730
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
735
On fire by lightning; with ethereal flame
Kindled he was, and blasted; for to be
Thus, and enamour’d, were in him the same.
But his was not the love of living dame,
Nor of the dead who rise upon our dreams,
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But of ideal beauty, which became
In him existence, and o’erflowing teems
Along his burning page, distemper’d though it seems.
LXXIX
This breathed itself to life in Julie, this
Invested her with all that’s wild and sweet;
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This hallow’d, too, the memorable kiss1
Which every morn his fever’d lip would greet,
From hers, who but with friendship his would meet;
But to that gentle touch, through brain and breast
Flash’d the thrill’d spirit’s love-devouring heat;
750
In that absorbing sigh perchance more blest
Than vulgar minds may be with all they seek possest.
LXXX
His life was one long war with self-sought foes,
Or friends by him self-banish’d; for his mind
Had grown Suspicion’s sanctuary, and chose,
755
For its own cruel sacrifice, the kind
‘Gainst whom he raged with fury strange and blind.
But he was phrensied, – wherefore, who may know?
Since cause might be which skill could never find;
But he was phrensied by disease or woe,
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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:
765
Did he not this for France? which lay before
Bow’d 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 fears?
LXXXII
770
They made themselves a fearful monument!
The wreck of old opinions – things which grew,
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,
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Leaving but ruins, wherewith to rebuild
Upon the same foundation, and renew
Dungeons and thrones, which the same hour refill’d,
As heretofore, because ambition was self-will’d.
LXXXIII
But this will not endure, nor be endured!
780
Mankind have felt their strength, and made it felt.
<
br /> 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 once natural charities. But they,
785
Who in oppression’s darkness caved had dwelt,
They were not eagles, nourish’d with the day;
What marvel then, at times, if they mistook their prey?
LXXXIV
What deep wounds ever closed without a scar?
The heart’s bleed longest, and but heal to wear
790
That which disfigures it; and they who war
With their own hopes, and have been vanquished, bear
Silence, but not submission: in his lair
Fix’d Passion holds his breath, until the hour
Which shall atone for years; none need despair:
795
It came, it cometh, and will come, – the power
To punish or forgive - in one we shall be slower.
LXXXV
Clear, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake
With the wild world I dwelt in, is a thing
Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake
800
Earth’s troubled waters for a purer spring.
This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing
To waft me from distraction; once I loved
Torn ocean’s roar, but thy soft murmuring
Sounds sweet as if a Sister’s voice reproved,
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That I with stern delights should e’er have been so moved.
LXXXVI
It is the hush of night, and all between
Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear,
Mellow’d and mingling, yet distinctly seen,
Save darken’d Jura, whose capt heights appear
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Precipitously steep; and drawing near,
There breathes a living fragrance from the shore,
Of flowers yet fresh with childhood; on the ear
Drops the light drip of the suspended oar,
Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more;
LXXXVII
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He is an evening reveller, who makes
His life an infancy, and sings his fill;
At intervals, some bird from out the brakes
Starts into voice a moment, then is still.
There seems a floating whisper on the hill,
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But that is fancy, for the starlight dews
All silently their tears of love instil,
Weeping themselves away, till they infuse
Deep into Nature’s breast the spirit of her hues.
LXXXVIII
Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven!
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If in your bright leaves we would read the fate
Of men and empires, – ’tis to be forgiven,
That in our aspirations to be great,
Our destinies o’erleap their mortal state,
And claim a kindred with you; for ye are
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A beauty and a mystery, and create
In us such love and reverence from afar,