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(From Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage)
AWAY with these! true Wisdom’s world will be | |
| Within its own creation, or in thine, | |
| Maternal Nature! for who teems like thee, | |
| Thus on the banks of thy majestic Rhine? | |
| There Harold gazes on a work divine, | 5 |
| A blending of all beauties; streams and dells, | |
| Fruit, foliage, crag, wood, cornfield, mountain, vine, | |
| And chiefless castles breathing stern farewells | |
| From gray but leafy walls, where Ruin greenly dwells. | |
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| And there they stand, as stands a lofty mind, | 10 |
| Worn, but unstooping to the baser crowd, | |
| All tenantless, save to the crannying wind, | |
| Or holding dark communion with the cloud. | |
| There was a day when they were young and proud, | |
| Banners on high, and battles passed below; | 15 |
| But they who fought are in a bloody shroud, | |
| And those which waved are shredless dust ere now, | |
| And the bleak battlements shall bear no future blow. | |
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| Beneath these battlements, within those walls, | |
| Power dwelt amidst her passions; in proud state | 20 |
| Each robber chief upheld his armed halls, | |
| Doing his evil will, nor less elate | |
| Than mightier heroes of a longer date. | |
| What want these outlaws conquerors should have | |
| But history’s purchased page to call them great? | 25 |
| A wider space, an ornamented grave? | |
| Their hopes were not less warm, their souls were full as brave. | |
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| In their baronial feuds and single fields, | |
| What deeds of prowess unrecorded died! | |
| And Love, which lent a blazon to their shields | 30 |
| With emblems well devised by amorous pride, | |
| Through all the mail of iron hearts would glide; | |
| But still their flame was fierceness, and drew on | |
| Keen contest and destruction near allied, | |
| And many a tower for some fair mischief won, | 35 |
| Saw the discolored Rhine beneath its ruin run. | |
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| But thou, exulting and abounding river! | |
| Making thy waves a blessing as they flow | |
| Through banks whose beauty would endure forever, | |
| Could man but leave thy bright creation so, | 40 |
| Nor its fair promise from the surface mow | |
| With the sharp scythe of conflict,—then to see | |
| Thy valley of sweet waters were to know | |
| Earth paved like heaven; and to seem such to me | |
| Even now what wants thy stream?—that it should Lethe be. | 45 |
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| A thousand battles have assailed thy banks, | |
| But these and half their fame have passed away, | |
| And slaughter heaped on high his weltering ranks; | |
| Their very graves are gone, and what are they? | |
| Thy tide washed down the blood of yesterday, | 50 |
| And all was stainless, and on thy clear stream | |
| Glassed with its dancing light the sunny ray; | |
| But o’er the blackened memory’s blighting dream | |
| Thy waves would vainly roll, all sweeping as they seem. | |
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