Childe Harold - Canto 3 LV - LXV

[Extracts]

LV - 1.
The castled Crag of Drachenfels
Frowns o'er the wide and winding Rhine,
Whose breast of waters broadly swells
Between the banks which bear the vine,
And hills all rich with blossomed trees,
And fields which promise corn and wine,
And scattered cities crowning these,
Whose far white walls along them shine,
Have strewed a scene, which I should see
With double joy wert thou with me.

2.
And peasant girls, with deep blue eyes,
And hands which offer early flowers,
Walk smiling o'er this Paradise;
Above, the frequent feudal towers
Through green leaves lift their walls of gray;
And many a rock which steeply lowers,
And noble arch in proud decay,
Look o'er this vale of vintage-bowers;
But one thing want these banks of Rhine,--
Thy gentle hand to clasp in mine!

3.
I send the lilies given to me--
Though long before thy hand they touch,
I know that they must withered be,
But yet reject them not as such;
For I have cherished them as dear,
Because they yet may meet thine eye,
And guide thy soul to mine even here,
When thou behold'st them drooping nigh,
And know'st them gathered by the Rhine,
And offered from my heart to thine!

4.
The river nobly foams and flows -
The charm of this enchanted ground,
And all its thousand turns disclose
Some fresher beauty varying round:
The haughtiest breast its wish might bound
Through life to dwell delighted here;
Nor could on earth a spot be found
To Nature and to me so dear -
Could thy dear eyes in following mine
Still sweeten more these banks of Rhine!

                              LVI.
By Coblentz, on a rise of gentle ground,
  There is a small and simple Pyramid,
  Crowning the summit of the verdant mound;
  Beneath its base are Heroes' ashes hid--
  Our enemy's--but let not that forbid
  Honour to Marceau! o'er whose early tomb
  Tears, big tears, gushed from the rough soldier's lid,
  Lamenting and yet envying such a doom,
Falling for France, whose rights he battled to resume.

                             LVII.
Brief, brave, and glorious was his young career,--
  His mourners were two hosts, his friends and foes;
  And fitly may the stranger lingering here
  Pray for his gallant Spirit's bright repose;--
  For he was Freedom's Champion, one of those,
  The few in number, who had not o'erstept
  The charter to chastise which she bestows
  On such as wield her weapons; he had kept
The whiteness of his soul--and thus men o'er him wept.

                             LVIII.
Here Ehrenbreitstein, with her shattered 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 watched along the plain:
  But Peace destroyed what War could never blight,
  And laid those proud roofs bare to Summer's rain--
On which the iron shower for years had poured 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 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,
  Gather 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 passed 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 Cannæ'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 Kings' rights divine, by some Draconic clause.

                              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-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 Aventicum, hath strewed her subject lands.