LXVI.

And there-oh! sweet and sacred be the name!-
Julia-the daughter, the devoted-gave

Her youth to Heaven; her heart, beneath a claim
Nearest to Heaven's, broke o'er a father's grave.
Justice is sworn 'gainst tears, and hers would crave
The life she lived in ; but the judge was just,
And then she died on him she could not save.

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,
The mirror where the stars and mountains view
The stillness of their aspect in each trace
Its clear depth yields of their far height and hue:
There is too much of man here, to look through
With a fit mind the might which I behold;
But soon in me shall Loneliness renew

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
Deep in its fountain, lest it overboil

In the hot throng, where we become the spoil
Of our infection, till too late and long

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
In fatal penitence, and in the blight

Of our own soul, turn all our blood to tears,
And colour things to come with hues of Night;
The race of life becomes a hopeless flight

To those that walk in darkness: on the sea,
The boldest steer but where their ports invite,
But there are wanderers o'er Eternity

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?
By the blue rushing of the arrowy Rhone, (18)
Or the pure bosom of its nursing lake,
Which feeds it as a mother who doth make
A fair but froward infant her own care,

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,
High mountains are a feeling, but the hum
Of human cities torture: I can see

Nothing to loathe in nature, save to be
A link reluctant in a fleshly chain,

Class'd among creatures, when the soul can flee,
And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain
Of ocean, or the stars, mingle, and not in vain.

LXXIII.

And thus I am absorb'd, and this is life:

I look upon the peopled desert past,
As on a place of agony and strife,

Where, for some sin, to Sorrow I was cast,
To act and suffer, but remount at last

With a fresh pinion; which I feel to spring,
Though young, yet waxing vigorous, as the blast
Which it would cope with, on delighted wing,

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?