Here Ehrenbreitstein, with her shatter'd 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 watch'd along the plain : But Peace destroy'd what War could never blight, And laid those proud roofs bare to Summer's rain-
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, nor too sombre nor too gay, Wild but not rude, awful yet not austere, Is to the mellow Earth as Autumn to the year.
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; 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
The brilliant, fair, and soft,-the glories of old days,
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,
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, Gather around these summits, as to show
How Earth may pierce to Heaven, yet leave vain man below.
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, 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,
Levell❜d Aventicum, hath strew'd her subject lands.
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.
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.
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 cherish'd than of old,
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