Their cherish'd gaze upon thee, lovely Rhine! 1 The brilliant, fair, and soft,—the glories of old days, LXI. The negligently grand, the fruitful bloom Whose fertile bounties here extend to all, Still springing o'er thy banks, though Empires near them fall. But these recede. LXII. Above me are the Alps, The palaces of Nature, whose vast walls Of cold sublimity, where forms and falls Gather around these summits, as to show How Earth may pierce to Heaven, yet leave vain man below. [On taking Hockheim, the Austrians, in one part of the engagement, got to the brow of the hill, whence they had their first view of the Rhine. They instantly halted - not a gun was fired -not a voice heard: but they stood gazing on the river with those feelings which the events of the last fifteen years at once called up. Prince Schwartzenberg rode up to know the cause of this sudden stop; then they gave three cheers, rushed after the enemy, and drove them into the water.] LXIII. But ere these matchless heights I dare to scan, Themselves their monument; -the Stygian coast Unsepulchred they roam'd, and shriek'd each wandering ghost. 1 LXIV. While Waterloo with Canna'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-entail'd Corruption; they no land Doom'd to bewail the blasphemy of laws Making kings' rights divine, by some Draconic clause. 1 The chapel is destroyed, and the pyramid of bones diminished to a small number by the Burgundian legion in the service of France; who anxiously effaced this record of their ancestors' less successful invasions. A few still remain, notwithstanding the pains taken by the Burgundians for ages (all who passed that way removing a bone to their own country), and the less justifiable larcenies of the Swiss postilions, who carried them off to sell for knife-handles; a purpose for which the whiteness imbibed by the bleaching of years had rendered them in great request. Of these relics I ventured to bring away as much as may have made a quarter of a hero, for which the sole excuse is, that if I had not, the next passer by might have perverted them to worse uses than the careful preservation which I intend for them. K LXV. By a lone wall a lonelier column rears Yet still with consciousness; and there it stands When the coeval pride of human hands, Levell'd Aventicum 1, hath strew'd her subject lands. LXVI. And there-oh! sweet and sacred be the name!. And held within their urn one mind, one heart, one dust. 2 1 Aventicum, near Morat, was the Roman capital of Helvetia, where Avenches now stands. 2 Julia Alpinula, a young Aventian priestess, died soon after a vain endeavour to save her father, condemned to death as a traitor by Aulus Cæcina. Her epitaph was discovered many years ago; it is thus: "Julia Alpinula: Hic jaceo. Infelicis patris infelix proles. Deæ Aventiæ Sacerdos. Exorare patris necem non potui: Male mori in fatis ille erat. Vixi annos XXIII."-I know of no human composition so affecting as this, nor a history of deeper interest. These are the names and actions which ought not to perish, and to which we turn with a true and healthy tenderness, from the wretched and glittering detail of a confused mass of conquests and battles, with which the mind is roused for a time to a false and feverish sympathy, from whence it recurs at length with all the nausea consequent on such intoxication. 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 In the sun's face, like yonder Alpine snow, LXVIII. 1 Lake Leman woos me with its crystal face, 2 Thoughts hid, but not less cherish'd than of old, Ere mingling with the herd had penn'd me in their fold. This is written in the eye of Mont Blanc (June 3d, 1816), which even at this distance dazzles mine. (July 20th.) I this day observed for some time the distinct reflection of Mont Blanc and Mont Argentière in the calm of the lake, which I was crossing in my boat; the distance of these mountains from their mirror is sixty miles. 2 In the exquisite lines which the poet, at this time, addressed to his sister, there is the following touching stanza: "I did remind thee of our own dear lake, By the old hall which may be mine no more. The sweet remembrance of a dearer shore: Sad havoc Time must with my memory make Ere that or thou can fade these eyes before; Though, like all things which I have loved, they are LXIX. To fly from, need not be to hate, mankind: In the hot throng, where we become the spoil We may deplore and struggle with the coil, LXX. There, in a moment, we may plunge our years Of our own soul turn all our blood to tears, But there are wanderers o'er Eternity Whose bark drives on and on, and anchor'd ne'er shall be. LXXI. Is it not better, then, to be alone, And love Earth only for its earthly sake? Or the pure bosom of its nursing lake, The colour of the Rhone at Geneva is blue, to a depth of tint which I have never seen equalled in water, salt or fresh, except in the Mediterranean and Archipelago.-[ See Don Juan, c. XIV. st. 87. for a beautiful comparison: "There was no great disparity of years, Though much in temper; but they never clash'd: |