Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Part 14

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 pa.s.sed 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 Aventic.u.m, 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 pa.s.s 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 anch.o.r.ed 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, 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, Cla.s.sed 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 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 felt 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?

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 pa.s.sion? 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 awhile--a pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sion, 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 pa.s.sion'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 who 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 Julie, 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 hers, 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.

Lx.x.x.

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 frenzied,--wherefore, who may know?

Since cause might be which skill could never find; But he was frenzied by disease or woe To that worst pitch of all, which wears a reasoning show.

Lx.x.xI.

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 fears?