Round some fair forest-lodge at morn.
Gay dames are there, in sylvan green;
Laughter and cries-those notes between!

The banners flashing through the trees
Make their blood dance and chain their eyes;

That bugle-music on the breeze

Arrests them with a charm'd surprise.

Banner by turns and bugle woo:

Ye shy recluses, follow too!

O children, what do ye reply?—
"Action and pleasure, will ye roam
Through these secluded dells to cry
And call us but too late ye come!
Too late for us your call ye blow,
Whose bent was taken long ago.

'Long since we pace this shadow'd nave; We watch those yellow tapers shine, Emblems of hope over the grave,

In the high altar's depth divine;
The organ carries to our ear

Its accents of another sphere.

“Fenced early in this cloistral round Of reverie, of shade, of prayer,

How should we grow in other ground?

How can we flower in foreign air? -Pass, banners, pass, and bugles, cease;

And leave our desert to its peace!"

STANZAS IN MEMORY OF THE AUTHOR

OF "OBERMANN." 13

NOVEMBER, 1849.

IN 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 14

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.

-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,

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!

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
Fresh through these pages blows;

Though to these leaves the glaciers spare

The soul of their white snows ;

Though here a mountain-murmur swells Of many a dark-bough'd pine;

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

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?

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

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 ;

And one, the strong much-toiling sage,

In German Weimar sleeps.