Part 3 — LINES ON LEAVING A SCENE IN BAVARIA.

Adieu the woods and waters’ side Imperial Danube’s rich domain! Adieu the grotto, wild and wide, The rocks abrupt, and grassy plain! For pallid Autumn once again Hath swelled each torrent of the hill; Her clouds collect, her shadows sail, And watery winds that sweep the vale, Grow loud and louder still. But not the storm, dethroning fast Yon monarch oak of massy pile; Nor river roaring to the blast Around its dark and desert isle; Nor church-bell[86] tolling to beguile The cloud-born thunder passing by, Can sound in discord to my soul: Roll on, ye mighty waters, roll! And rage, thou darkened sky! Thy blossoms now no longer bright; Thy withered woods no longer green Yet, Eldurn shore, with dark delight I visit thy unlovely scene! For many a sunset hour serene My steps have trod thy mellow dew; When his green light the fire-fly gave, When Cynthia from the distant wave Her twilight anchor drew, And ploughed, as with a swelling sail, The billowy clouds and starry sea: Then while thy hermit nightingale Sang on his fragrant apple-tree,— Romantic, solitary, free, The visitant of Eldurn’s shore, On such a moonlight mountain strayed As echoed to the music made By Druid harps of yore. Around thy savage hills of oak, Around thy waters bright and blue, No hunter’s horn the silence broke, No dying shriek thine echo knew; But safe, sweet Eldurn woods, to you The wounded wild deer ever ran. Whose myrtle bound their grassy cave, Whose very rocks a shelter gave From blood-pursuing man. Oh heart effusions, that arose From nightly wanderings cherished here; To him who flies from many woes, Even homeless deserts can be dear! The last and solitary cheer Of those that own no earthly home, Say—is it not, ye banished race, In such a loved and lonely place Companionless to roam? Yes! I have loved thy wild abode, Unknown, unploughed, untrodden shore; Where scarce the woodman finds a road, And scarce the fisher plies an oar: For man’s neglect I love thee more; That art nor avarice intrude To tame thy torrent’s thunder-shock, Or prune thy vintage of the rock Magnificently rude. Unheeded spreads thy blossomed bud Its milky bosom to the bee; Unheeded falls along the flood desolate and aged tree. Forsaken scene, how like to thee The fate of unbefriended Worth! Like thine her fruit dishonoured falls, Like thee in solitude she calls A thousand treasures forth. O! silent spirit of the place, If, lingering with the ruined year, Thy hoary form and awful face I yet might watch and worship here! Thy storm were music to mine ear, Thy wildest walk a shelter given Sublimer thoughts on earth to find, And share, with no unhallowed mind, The majesty of heaven. What though the bosom friends of Fate,— Prosperity’s unweanèd brood,— Thy consolations cannot rate, O self-dependent solitude! Yet with a spirit unsubdued, Though darkened by the clouds of Care, To worship thy congenial gloom, A pilgrim to the Prophet’s tomb Misfortune shall repair. On her the world hath never smiled Or looked but with accusing eye; All-silent goddess of the wild, To thee that misanthrope shall fly! I hear her deep soliloquy, I mark her proud but ravaged form, As stern she wraps her mantle round, And bids, on winter’s bleakest ground, Defiance to the storm. Peace to her banished heart, at last, In thy dominions shall descend, And, strong as beechwood in the blast, Her spirit shall refuse to bend; Enduring life without a friend, The world and falsehood left behind, Thy votary shall bear elate (Triumphant o’er opposing Fate), Her dark inspirèd mind. But dost thou, Folly, mock the muse A wanderer’s mountain walk to sing, Who shuns a warring world, nor wooes The vulture cover of its wing? Then fly, thou cowering, shivering thing, Back to the fostering world beguiled To waste in self-consuming strife The loveless brotherhood of life, Reviling and reviled! Away, thou lover of the race That hither chased yon weeping deer! If Nature’s all majestic face More pitiless than man’s appear; Or if the wild winds seem more drear Than man’s cold charities below, Behold around his peopled plains, Where’er the social savage reigns, Exuberance of woe! His art and honours wouldst thou seek Embossed on grandeur’s giant walls? Or hear his moral thunders speak Where senates light their airy halls, Where man his brother man enthralls; Or sends his whirlwind warrants forth To rouse the slumbering fiends of war, To dye the blood-warm waves afar, And desolate the earth? From clime to clime pursue the scene, And mark in all thy spacious way, Where’er the tyrant man has been, There Peace, the cherub, cannot stay; In wilds and woodlands far away She builds her solitary bower, Where only anchorites have trod, Or friendless men, to worship God, Have wandered for an hour. In such a far forsaken vale,— And such, sweet Eldurn vale, is thine,— Afflicted nature shall inhale Heaven-borrowed thoughts and joys divine: No longer wish, no more repine For man’s neglect or woman’s scorn;— Then wed thee to an exile’s lot, For if the world hath loved thee not, Its absence may be borne.

O thou by whose expressive art Her perfect image Nature sees In union with the Graces start, And sweeter by reflection please! In whose creative hand the hues Fresh from yon orient rainbow shine; I bless thee, Promethéan Muse! And call thee brightest of the Nine! Possessing more than vocal power, Persuasive more than poet’s tongue; Whose lineage, in a raptured hour,[87] From Love, the Sire of Nature, sprung. Does Hope her high possession meet? Is joy triumphant, sorrow flown? Sweet is the trance, the tremor sweet, When all we love is all our own. But oh! thou pulse of pleasure dear, Slow throbbing, cold, I feel thee part; Lone absence plants a pang severe, Or death inflicts a keener dart. Then for a beam of joy to light In memory’s sad and wakeful eye! Or banish from the noon of night Her dreams of deeper agony. Shall Song its witching cadence roll? Yea, even the tenderest air repeat, That breathed when soul was knit to soul, And heart to heart responsive beat? What visions rise! to charm, to melt! The lost, the loved, the dead are near! Oh, hush that strain too deeply felt! And cease that solace too severe! But thou serenely silent art! By heaven and love wast taught to lend A milder solace to the heart, The sacred image of a friend. All is not lost! if, yet possest, To me that sweet memorial shine:— If close and closer to my breast I hold that idol all divine. Or, gazing through luxurious tears, Melt o’er the loved departed form, Till death’s cold bosom half appears With life, and speech, and spirit warm. She looks! she lives! this trancèd hour, Her bright eye seems a purer gem Than sparkles on the throne of power, Or glories wealthy diadem. Yes, Genius, yes! thy mimic aid A treasure to my soul has given, Where beauty’s canonisèd shade Smiles in the sainted hues of heaven No spectre forms of pleasure fled, Thy softening, sweetening tints restore; For thou canst give us back the dead, E’en in the loveliest looks they wore. Then blest be Nature’s guardian Muse, Whose hand her perished grace redeems! Whose tablet of a thousand hues The mirror of creation seems. From Love began thy high descent; And lovers, charmed by gifts of thine, Shall bless thee mutely eloquent; And call thee brightest of the Nine!

Sweet Iser! were thy sunny realm And flowery gardens mine, Thy waters I would shade with elm To prop the tender vine; My golden flagons I would fill With rosy draughts from every hill; And under every myrtle bower, My gay companions should prolong The laugh, the revel, and the song, To many an idle hour. Like rivers crimsoned with the beam Of yonder planet bright, Our balmy cups should ever stream Profusion of delight; No care should touch the mellow heart, And sad or sober none depart; For wine can triumph over woe, And Love and Bacchus, brother powers, Could build in Iser’s sunny bowers A paradise below.

And call they this Improvement?—to have changed, My native Clyde, thy once romantic shore, Where Nature’s face is banished and estranged, And Heaven reflected in thy wave no more; Whose banks, that sweetened May-day’s breath before, Lie sere and leafless now in summer’s beam, With sooty exhalations covered o’er; And for the daisied green sward, down thy stream Unsightly brick-lanes smoke, and clanking engines gleam. Speak not to me of swarms the scene sustains; One heart free tasting Nature’s breath and bloom Is worth a thousand slaves to Mammon’s gains. But whither goes that wealth, and gladd’ning whom? See, left but life enough and breathing-room The hunger and the hope of life to feel, Yon pale Mechanic bending o’er his loom, And Childhood’s self as at Ixion’s wheel, From morn till midnight tasked to earn its little meal. Is this Improvement?—where the human breed Degenerates as they swarm and overflow, Till Toil grows cheaper than the trodden weed, And man competes with man, like foe with foe, Till Death, that thins them, scarce seems public woe? Improvement!—smiles it in the poor man’s eyes, Or blooms it on the cheek of Labour?—No— To gorge a few with Trade’s precarious prize, We banish rural life, and breathe unwholesome skies. Nor call that evil slight; God has not given This passion to the heart of man in vain, For Earth’s green face, th’ untainted air of Heaven, And all the bliss of Nature’s rustic reign. For not alone our frame imbibes a stain From fœtid skies; the spirit’s healthy pride Fades in their gloom—And therefore I complain, That thou no more through pastoral scenes shouldst glide, My Wallace’s own stream, and once romantic Clyde!

Oh! scenes of my childhood, and dear to my heart Ye green waving woods on the margin of Cart, How blest in the morning of life I have strayed, By the stream of the vale and the grass-covered glade! Then, then every rapture was young and sincere, Ere the sunshine of bliss was bedimmed by a tear, And a sweeter delight every scene seemed to lend, That the mansion of peace was the house of a friend. Now the scenes of my childhood and dear to my heart, All pensive I visit, and sigh to depart; Their flowers seem to languish, their beauty to cease, For a stranger inhabits the mansion of peace. But hushed be the sigh that untimely complains, While Friendship and all its enchantment remains, While it blooms like the flower of a winterless clime, Untainted by chance, unabated by time.

Prophetic pencil! wilt thou trace A faithful image of the face, Or wilt thou write the “Name Unknown,” Ordained to bless my charmèd soul, And all my future fate control, Unrivalled and alone? Delicious Idol of my thought! Though sylph or spirit hath not taught My boding heart thy precious name; Yet musing on my distant fate, To charms unseen I consecrate A visionary flame Thy rosy blush, thy meaning eye, Thy virgin voice of melody, Are ever present to my heart; Thy murmured vows shall yet be mine, My thrilling hand shall meet with thine, And never, never part! Then fly, my days, on rapid wing, Till Love the viewless treasure bring; While I, like conscious Athens, own A power in mystic silence sealed, A guardian angel unrevealed, And bless the “Name Unknown!”

Withdraw not yet those lips and fingers, Whose touch to mine is rapture’s spell; Life’s joy for us a moment lingers, And death seems in the word—farewell. The hour that bids us part and go, It sounds not yet,—oh! no, no, no! Time, whilst I gaze upon thy sweetness, Flies like a courser nigh the goal; To-morrow where shall be his fleetness, When thou art parted from my soul? Our hearts shall beat, our tears shall flow, But not together,—no, no, no!

What’s hallowed ground? Has earth a clod Its Maker meant not should be trod By man, the image of his God, Erect and free, Unscourged by superstition’s rod To bow the knee? That’s hallowed ground—where mourned and missed The lips repose our love has kissed;— But where’s their memory’s mansion? Is’t Yon churchyard’s bowers? No! in ourselves their souls exist, A part of ours. A kiss can consecrate the ground Where mated hearts are mutual bound: The spot where love’s first links were wound, That ne’er are riven, Is hallowed down to earth’s profound, And up to Heaven! For time makes all but true love old; The burning thoughts that then were told Run molten still in memory’s mould; And will not cool, Until the heart itself be cold In Lethe’s pool. What hallows ground where heroes sleep? ’Tis not the sculptured piles you heap! In dews that heavens far distant weep Their turf may bloom; Or Genii twine beneath the deep Their coral tomb. But strew his ashes to the wind Whose sword or voice has served mankind— And is he dead, whose glorious mind Lifts thine on high?— To live in hearts we leave behind, Is not to die. Is’t death to fall for Freedom’s right? He’s dead alone that lacks her light! And murder sullies in Heaven’s sight The sword he draws:— What can alone ennoble fight? A noble cause! Give that! and welcome war to brace Her drums! and rend Heaven’s reeking space! The colours planted face to face, The charging cheer, Though Death’s pale horse lead on the chase, Shall still be dear. And place our trophies where men kneel To Heaven!—but Heaven rebukes my zeal! The cause of Truth and Human weal, O God above! Transfer it from the sword’s appeal To Peace and Love. Peace, Love! the cherubim that join Their spread wings o’er Devotion’s shrine— Prayers sound in vain, and temples shine, Where they are not— The heart alone can make divine Religion’s spot. To incantations dost thou trust, And pompous rites in domes august? See mouldering stones and metal’s rust Belie the vaunt, That man can bless one pile of dust With chime or chaunt. The ticking wood-worm mocks thee, man! Thy temples—creeds themselves grow wan! But there’s a dome of nobler span, A temple given Thy faith, that bigots dare not ban— Its space is Heaven! Its roof star-pictured Nature’s ceiling, Where trancing the rapt spirit’s feeling, And God himself to man revealing The harmonious spheres Make music, though unheard their pealing By mortal ears. Fair stars! are not your beings pure? Can sin, can death your worlds obscure? Else why so swell the thoughts at your Aspect above? Ye must be Heaven’s that make us sure Of heavenly love! And in your harmony sublime I read the doom of distant time; That man’s regenerate soul from crime Shall yet be drawn, And reason on his mortal clime Immortal dawn. What’s hallowed ground? ’Tis what gives birth To sacred thoughts in souls of worth!— Peace! Independence! Truth! go forth Earth’s compass round; And your high priesthood shall make earth All hallowed ground.