I in the world must live! but thou, Wilt not, if thou can'st see me now, For thou art gone away from earth, And with that small transfigured band, Whom many a different way Conducted to their common land, Thou learn'st to think as they. Christian and pagan, king and slave, Soldier and anchorite, Distinctions we esteem so grave, Are nothing in their sight. They do not ask, who pined unseen, Who was on action hurl'd, Whose one bond is, that all have been Unspotted by the world. There without anger thou wilt see No more, so he but rest, like thee, Unsoil'd; and so, farewell! Farewell!-Whether thou now liest near That much-loved inland sea The ripples of whose blue waves cheer Vevey and Meillerie; And in that gracious region bland, Between the dusty vineyard-walls The pensive stranger's face, And stoops to clear thy moss-grown date Ere he plods on again; Or whether, by maligner fate, Among the swarms of men, Where between granite terraces The capital of pleasure sees Thy hardly-heard-of grave Farewell! Under the sky we part, In this stern Alpine dell. O unstrung will! O broken heart A last, a last farewell! OBERMANN ONCE MORE. (COMPOSED MANY YEARS AFTER THE PRECEDING.) Savez-vous quelque bien qui console du regret d'un monde? GLION? OBERMANN. -Ah, twenty years, it cuts All meaning from a name! 14 White houses prank where once were huts; Glion, but not the same! And yet I know not! All unchanged The turf, the pines, the sky; The hills in their old order ranged; The lake, with Chillon by! And 'neath those chestnut-trees, where stiff And stony mounts the way, Their crackling husk-heaps burn, as if I left them yesterday. Across the valley, on that slope, The huts of Avant shine! Its pines under their branches ope Ways for the tinkling kine. Full-foaming milk-pails, Alpine fare, Sweet heaps of fresh-cut grass, Invite to rest the traveller there Before he climb the pass The gentian-flower'd pass, its crown 15 With yellow spires aflame; Whence drops the path to Allière down, 16 And walls where Byron came,10 By their green river who doth change His birth-name just below Orchard, and croft, and full-stored grange Nursed by his pastoral flow. But stop!-to fetch back thoughts that stray Beyond this gracious bound, The cone of Jaman, pale and grey, See, in the blue profound! Ah, Jaman delicately tall Above his sun-warm'd firs What thoughts to me his rocks recall! What memories he stirs ! |