LVIII.

Here Ehrenbreitstein 1, 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 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!
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.

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;
And if reluctantly the eyes resign

1 Ehrenbreitstein, i. e. "the broad stone of honour," one of the strongest fortresses in Europe, was dismantled and blown up by the French at the truce of Leoben. It had been, and could only be, reduced by famine or treachery. It yielded to the former, aided by surprise. After having seen the fortifications of Gibraltar and Malta, it did not much strike by comparison; but the situation is commanding. General Marceau besieged it in vain for some time, and I slept in a room where I was shown a window at which he is said to have been standing observing the progress of the siege by moonlight, when a ball struck immediately below it.

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,

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.

But these recede.

LXII.

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.

[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,
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,
A bony heap, through ages to remain,

Themselves their monument ;- the Stygian coast Unsepulchred they roam'd, and shriek'd each wandering ghost.

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

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 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.
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. 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
Should be, and shall, survivor of its woe,
And from its immortality look forth

In the sun's face, like yonder Alpine snow, 1
Imperishably pure beyond all things below.

LXVIII.

Lake Leman woos me with its crystal face, 2
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, 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.
Leman's is fair; but think not I forsake

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
Resign'd for ever, or divided far."