Selected Poems (82 page)

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.
¹

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,
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

640

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,

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,
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

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,