LXVI. And there-oh! sweet and sacred be the name!- Her youth to Heaven; her heart, beneath a claim Their tomb was simple, and without a bust, And held within their urn one mind, one heart, one dust. (16) LXVII. But these are deeds which should not pass away, And names that must not wither, though the earth Forgets her empires with a just decay, The enslavers and the enslaved, their death and birth; The high, the mountain-majesty of worth Should be, and shall, survivor of its woe, And from its immortality look forth In the sun's face, like yonder Alpine snow, (17) Imperishably pure beyond all things below. LXVIII. Lake Leman woos me with its crystal face, Thoughts hid, but not less cherish'd than of old, Ere mingling with the herd had penn'd me in their fold. LXIX. To fly from, need not be to hate, mankind; All are not fit with them to stir and toil, Nor is it discontent to keep the mind In the hot throng, where we become the spoil We may deplore and struggle with the coil, In wretched interchange of wrong for wrong 'Midst a contentious world, striving where none are strong. LXX. There, in a moment, we may plunge our years Of our own soul, turn all our blood to tears, To those that walk in darkness: on the sea, Whose bark drives on and on, and anchor'd ne'er shall be. LXXI. Is it not better, then, to be alone, And love Earth only for its earthly sake? Kissing its cries away as these awake; Is it not better thus our lives to wear, Than join the crushing crowd, doom'd to inflict or bear? LXXII. I live not in myself, but I become Portion of that around me; and to me, Nothing to loathe in nature, save to be Class'd among creatures, when the soul can flee, LXXIII. And thus I am absorb'd, and this is life: I look upon the peopled desert past, Where, for some sin, to Sorrow I was cast, With a fresh pinion; which I feel to spring, Spurning the clay-cold bonds which round our being cling. LXXIV. And when, at length, the mind shall be all free From what it hates in this degraded form, Reft of its carnal life, save what shall be Existent happier in the fly and worm,— When elements to elements conform, And dust is as it should be, shall I not Feel all I see, less dazzling, but more warm? The bodiless thought? the Spirit of each spot? Of which, even now, I share at times the immortal lot? LXXV. Are not the mountains, waves, and skies, a part Of me and of my soul, as I of them? Is not the love of these deep in my heart With a pure passion? should I not contemn All objects, if compared with these? and stem A tide of suffering, rather than forego Such feelings for the hard and worldly phlegm Of those whose eyes are only turn'd below, Gazing upon the ground, with thoughts which dare not glow? |