| |
[First published 1852. Reprinted 1855.]
IN 1 front the awful Alpine track | |
| Crawls up its rocky stair; | |
| The autumn storm-winds drive the rack | |
| Close o’er it, in the air. | |
| |
| Behind are the abandon’d baths | 5 |
| Mute in their meadows lone; | |
| The leaves are on the valley paths; | |
| The mists are on the Rhone— | |
| |
| The white mists rolling like a sea. | |
| I hear the torrents roar. | 10 |
| —Yes, Obermann, all speaks of thee! | |
| I feel thee near once more. | |
| |
| I turn thy leaves: I feel their breath | |
| Once more upon me roll; | |
| That air of languor, cold, and death, | 15 |
| Which brooded o’er thy soul. | |
| |
| Fly hence, poor Wretch, whoe’er thou art, | |
| Condemn’d to cast about, | |
| All shipwreck in thy own weak heart, | |
| For comfort from without: | 20 |
| |
| A fever in these pages burns | |
| Beneath the calm they feign; | |
| A wounded human spirit turns | |
| Here, on its bed of pain. | |
| |
| Yes, though the virgin mountain air | 25 |
| Fresh through these pages blows, | |
| Though to these leaves the glaciers spare | |
| The soul of their white 2 snows, | |
| |
| Though here a mountain murmur swells | |
| Of many a dark-bough’d pine, | 30 |
| Though, as you read, you hear the bells | |
| Of the high-pasturing kine— | |
| |
| Yet, through the hum of torrent lone, | |
| And brooding mountain bee, | |
| There sobs I know not what ground tone | 35 |
| Of human agony. | |
| |
| Is it for this, because the sound | |
| Is fraught too deep with pain, | |
| That, Obermann! the world around | |
| So little loves thy strain? | 40 |
| |
| Some secrets may the poet tell, | |
| For the world loves new ways. | |
| To tell too deep ones is not well; | |
| It knows not what he says. | |
| |
| Yet of the spirits who have reign’d | 45 |
| In this our troubled day, | |
| I know but two, who have attain’d, | |
| Save thee, to see their way. | |
| |
| By England’s lakes, in grey old age, | |
| His quiet home one keeps; 3 | 50 |
| And one, the strong much-toiling Sage, | |
| In German Weimar sleeps. | |
| |
| But Wordsworth’s eyes avert their ken | |
| From half of human fate; | |
| And Goethe’s course few sons of men | 55 |
| May think to emulate. | |
| |
| For he pursued a lonely road, | |
| His eyes on Nature’s plan; | |
| Neither made man too much a God, | |
| Nor God too much a man. | 60 |
| |
| Strong was he, with a spirit free | |
| From mists, and sane, and clear; | |
| Clearer, how much! than ours: yet we | |
| Have a worse course to steer. | |
| |
| For though his manhood bore the blast | 65 |
| Of Europe’s stormiest 4 time, | |
| Yet in a tranquil world was pass’d | |
| His tenderer youthful prime. | |
| |
| But we, brought forth and rear’d in hours | |
| Of change, alarm, surprise— | 70 |
| What shelter to grow ripe is ours? | |
| What leisure to grow wise? | |
| |
| Like children bathing on the shore, | |
| Buried a wave beneath, | |
| The second wave succeeds, before | 75 |
| We have had time to breathe. | |
| |
| Too fast we live, too much are tried, | |
| Too harass’d, to attain | |
| Wordsworth’s sweet calm, or Goethe’s wide | |
| And luminous view to gain. | 80 |
| |
| And then we turn, thou sadder Sage! | |
| To thee: we feel thy spell. | |
| The hopeless tangle of our age— | |
| Thou too hast scann’d it well. | |
| |
| Immovable thou sittest; still | 85 |
| As death; compos’d to bear. | |
| Thy head is clear, thy feeling chill— | |
| And icy thy despair. | |
| |
| Yes, as the Son of Thetis 5 said, | |
| One hears thee saying now— | 90 |
| Greater by far than thou are dead: | |
| Strive not: die also thou.— | |
| |
| Ah! Two desires toss about | |
| The poet’s feverish blood. | |
| One drives him to the world without, | 95 |
| And one to solitude. | |
| |
| The glow, he cries, the thrill of life— 6 | |
| Where, where do these abound?— | |
| Not in the world, not in the strife | |
| Of men, shall they be found. | 100 |
| |
| He who hath watch’d, not shar’d, the strife, | |
| Knows how the day hath gone; | |
| He only lives with the world’s life | |
| Who hath renounc’d his own. | |
| |
| To thee we come, then. Clouds are roll’d | 105 |
| Where thou, O Seer, art set; | |
| Thy realm of thought is drear and cold— | |
| The world is colder yet! | |
| |
| And thou hast pleasures too to share | |
| With those who come to thee: | 110 |
| Balms floating on thy mountain air, | |
| And healing sights to see. | |
| |
| How often, where the slopes are green | |
| On Jaman, hast thou sate | |
| By some high chalet door, and seen | 115 |
| The summer day grow late, | |
| |
| And darkness steal o’er the wet grass | |
| With the pale crocus starr’d, | |
| And reach that glimmering sheet of glass | |
| Beneath the piny sward, | 120 |
| |
| Lake Leman’s waters, far below: | |
| And watch’d the rosy light | |
| Fade from the distant peaks of snow: | |
| And on the air of night | |
| |
| Heard accents of the eternal tongue | 125 |
| Through the pine branches play: | |
| Listen’d, and felt thyself grow young; | |
| Listen’d, and wept——Away! | |
| |
| Away the dreams that but deceive! | |
| And thou, sad Guide, adieu! | 130 |
| I go; Fate drives me: but I leave | |
| Half of my life with you. | |
| |
| We, in some unknown Power’s employ, | |
| Move on a rigorous line: | |
| Can neither, when we will, enjoy; | 135 |
| Nor, when we will, resign. | |
| |
| I in the world must live:—but thou, | |
| Thou melancholy Shade! | |
| Wilt not, if thou canst see me now, | |
| Condemn me, nor upbraid. | 140 |
| |
| For thou art gone away from earth, | |
| And place with those dost claim, | |
| The Children of the Second Birth | |
| Whom the world could not tame; | |
| |
| And with that small transfigur’d Band, | 145 |
| Whom many a different way | |
| Conducted to their common land, | |
| Thou learn’st to think as they. | |
| |
| Christian and pagan, king and slave, | |
| Soldier and anchorite, | 150 |
| Distinctions we esteem so grave, | |
| Are nothing in their sight. | |
| |
| They do not ask, who pin’d unseen, | |
| Who was on action hurl’d, | |
| Whose one bond is that all have been | 155 |
| Unspotted by the world. | |
| |
| There without anger thou wilt see | |
| Him who obeys thy spell | |
| No more, so he but rest, like thee, | |
| Unsoil’d:—and so, Farewell! | 160 |
| |
| Farewell!—Whether thou now liest near | |
| That much-lov’d inland sea, | |
| The ripples of whose blue waves cheer | |
| Vevey and Meillerie, | |
| |
| And in that gracious region bland, | 165 |
| Where with clear-rustling wave | |
| The scented pines of Switzerland | |
| Stand dark round thy green grave, | |
| |
| Between the dusty vineyard walls | |
| Issuing on that green place | 170 |
| The early peasant still recalls | |
| The pensive stranger’s face, | |
| |
| And stoops to clear thy moss-grown date | |
| Ere he plods on again;— | |
| Or whether, by maligner Fate, | 175 |
| Among the swarms of men, | |
| |
| Where between granite terraces | |
| The blue Seine rolls 7 her wave, | |
| The Capital of Pleasure sees | |
| Thy hardly-heard-of grave— | 180 |
| |
| Farewell! Under the sky we part, | |
| In this stern Alpine dell. | |
| O unstrung will! O broken heart! | |
| A last, a last farewell! | |
