separate parts alone!
The movement he must tell of life,
Its pain and pleasure, rest and strife;
His eye must travel down, at full,
The long, unpausing spectacle;
With faithful unrelaxing force
Attend it from its primal source,
From change to change and year to year
Attend it of its mid career,
Attend it to the last repose
And solemn silence of its close.
“The cattle rising from the grass
His thought must follow where they pass;
The penitent with anguish bow’d
His thought must follow through the crowd.
Yes, all this eddying, motley throng
That sparkles in the sun along,
Girl, statesman, merchant, soldier bold,
Master and servant, young and old,
Grave, gay, child, parent, husband, wife,
He follows home, and lives their life!
“And many, many are the souls
Life’s movement fascinates, controls.
It draws them on, they cannot save
Their feet from its alluring wave;
They cannot leave it, they must go
With its unconquerable flow.
But, ah, how few of all that try
This mighty march, do aught but die!
For ill prepared for such a way,
Ill found in strength, in wits, are they!
They faint, they stagger to and fro,
And wandering from the stream they go;
In pain, in terror, in distress,
They see, all round, a wilderness.
Sometimes a momentary gleam
They catch of the mysterious stream;
Sometimes, a second’s space, their ear
The murmur of its waves doth hear.
That transient glimpse in song they say,
But not as painter can portray!
That transient sound in song they tell,
But not, as the musician, well!
And when at last their snatches cease,
And they are silent and at peace,
The stream of life’s majestic whole
Hath ne’er been mirror’d on their soul.
“Only a few the life-stream’s shore
With safe unwandering feet explore.
Untired its movement bright attend,
Follow its windings to the end.
Then from its brimming waves their eye
Drinks up delighted ecstasy,
And its deep-toned, melodious voice,
For ever makes their ear rejoice.
They speak! the happiness divine
They feel, runs o’er in every line.
Its spell is round them like a shower;
It gives them pathos, gives them power.
No painter yet hath such a way
Nor no musician made, as they;
And gather’d on immortal knolls
Such lovely flowers for cheering souls!
Beethoven, Raphael, cannot reach
The charm which Homer, Shakespeare, teach.
To these, to these, their thankful race
Gives, then, the first, the fairest place!
And brightest is their glory’s sheen,
For greatest hath their labour been.”
A Wish
I ask not that my bed of death
From bands of greedy heirs be free;
For these besiege the latest breath
Of fortune’s favour’d sons, not me.
I ask not each kind soul to keep
Tearless, when of my death he hears;
Let those who will, if any, weep!
There are worse plagues on earth than tears.
I ask but that my death may find
The freedom to my life denied;
Ask but the folly of mankind
Then, then at last, to quit my side.
Spare me the whispering, crowded room,
The friends who come, and gape, and go;
The ceremonious air of gloom—
All, which makes death a hideous show!
Nor bring, to see me cease to live,
Some doctor full of phrase and fame,
To shake his sapient head and give
The ill he cannot cure a name.
Nor fetch, to take the accustom’d toll
Of the poor sinner bound for death,
His brother doctor of the soul,
To canvass with official breath
The future and its viewless things—
That undiscover’d mystery
Which one who feels death’s winnowing wings
Must needs read clearer, sure, than he!
Bring none of these! but let me be,
While all around in silence lies,
Moved to the window near, and see
Once more, before my dying eyes
Bathed in the sacred dews of morn
The wide aerial landscape spread—
The world which was ere I was born,
The world which lasts when I am dead.
Which never was the friend of one,
Nor promised love it could not give,
But lit for all its generous sun,
And lived itself, and made us live.
There let me gaze, till I become
In soul with what I gaze on wed!
To feel the universe my home;
To have before my mind—instead
Of the sick-room, the mortal strife,
The turmoil for a little breath—
The pure eternal course of life,
Not human combatings with death.
Thus feeling, gazing, let me grow
Composed, refresh’d, ennobled, clear;
Then willing let my spirit go
To work or wait elsewhere or here!
Glion?—Ah, twenty years, it cuts50
All meaning from a name!
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,
The 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
With yellow spires aflame,51
Whence drops the path to Allière down,
And walls where Byron came,52
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!
And who but thou must be, in truth,
Obermann! with me here?
Thou master of my wandering youth,
But left this many a year!
Yes, I forget the world’s work wrought,
Its warfare waged with pain!
An eremite with thee, in thought
Once more I slip my chain
And to thy mountain-chalet come
And lie beside its door
And hear the wild bee’s Alpine hum,
And thy sad, tranquil lore.
Again I feel the words inspire
Their mournful calm—serene,
Yet tinged with infinite desire
For all that might have been,
The harmony from which man swerved
Made his life’s rule once more!
The universal order served!
Earth happier than before!
While thus I mused, night gently ran
Down over hill and wood.
Then, still and sudden, Obermann
On the grass near me stood.
Those pensive features well I knew,
On my mind, years before,
Imaged so oft, imaged so true!
A shepherd’s garb he wore,
A mountain-flower was in his hand,
A book was in his breast;
Bent on my face, with gaze which scann’d
My soul, his eyes did rest.
“And is it thou,” he cried, “so long
Held by the world which we
Loved not,
