Poetry · Switzerland

Switzerland

I

Meeting

Again I see my bliss at hand;

The town, the lake are here.

My Marguerite smiles upon the strand13

Unalter’d with the year.

I know that graceful figure fair,

That cheek of languid hue;

I know that soft, enkerchief’d hair,

And those sweet eyes of blue.

Again I spring to make my choice;

Again in tones of ire

I hear a God’s tremendous voice⁠—

“Be counsell’d, and retire!”

Ye guiding Powers, who join and part,

What would ye have with me?

Ah, warn some more ambitious heart,

And let the peaceful be!

II

Parting

Ye storm-winds of Autumn

Who rush by, who shake

The window, and ruffle

The gleam-lighted lake;

Who cross to the hill-side

Thin-sprinkled with farms,

Where the high woods strip sadly

Their yellowing arms;⁠—

Ye are bound for the mountains⁠—

Ah, with you let me go

Where your cold distant barrier,

The vast range of snow,

Through the loose clouds lifts dimly

Its white peaks in air⁠—

How deep is their stillness!

Ah! would I were there!

But on the stairs what voice is this I hear,

Buoyant as morning, and as morning clear?

Say, has some wet bird-haunted English lawn

Lent it the music of its trees at dawn?

Or was it from some sun-fleck’d mountain-brook

That the sweet voice its upland clearness took?

Ah! it comes nearer⁠—

Sweet notes, this way!

Hark! fast by the window

The rushing winds go,

To the ice-cumber’d gorges,

The vast seas of snow.

There the torrents drive upward

Their rock-strangled hum,

There the avalanche thunders

The hoarse torrent dumb.

—I come, O ye mountains!

Ye torrents, I come!

But who is this, by the half-open’d door,

Whose figure casts a shadow on the floor?

The sweet blue eyes⁠—the soft, ash-colour’d hair⁠—

The cheeks that still their gentle paleness wear⁠—

The lovely lips, with their arch smile, that tells

The unconquer’d joy in which her spirit dwells⁠—

Ah! they bend nearer⁠—

Sweet lips, this way!

Hark! the wind rushes past us⁠—

Ah! with that let me go

To the clear waning hill-side

Unspotted by snow,

There to watch, o’er the sunk vale,

The frore mountain wall,

Where the nich’d snow-bed sprays down

Its powdery fall.

There its dusky blue clusters

The aconite spreads;

There the pines slope, the cloud-strips

Hung soft in their heads.

No life but, at moments,

The mountain-bee’s hum.

—I come, O ye mountains!

Ye pine-woods, I come!

Forgive me! forgive me!

Ah, Marguerite, fain

Would these arms reach to clasp thee:⁠—

But see! ’tis in vain.

In the void air towards thee

My strain’d arms are cast.

But a sea rolls between us⁠—

Our different past.

To the lips, ah! of others,

Those lips have been prest,

And others, ere I was,

Were clasp’d to that breast;

Far, far from each other

Our spirits have grown.

And what heart knows another?

Ah! who knows his own?

Blow, ye winds! lift me with you!

I come to the wild.

Fold closely, O Nature!

Thine arms round thy child.

To thee only God granted

A heart ever new:

To all always open;

To all always true.

Ah, calm me! restore me!

And dry up my tears

On thy high mountain platforms,

Where Morn first appears,

Where the white mists, for ever,

Are spread and upfurl’d;

In the stir of the forces

Whence issued the world.

III

A Farewell

My horse’s feet beside the lake,

Where sweet the unbroken moonbeams lay,

Sent echoes through the night to wake

Each glistening strand, each heath-fring’d bay.

The poplar avenue was pass’d,

And the roof’d bridge that spans the stream.

Up the steep street I hurried fast,

Led by thy taper’s starlike beam.

I came; I saw thee rise:⁠—the blood

Came flushing to thy languid cheek.

Lock’d in each other’s arms we stood,

In tears, with hearts too full to speak.

Days flew: ah, soon I could discern

A trouble in thine alter’d air.

Thy hand lay languidly in mine⁠—

Thy cheek was grave, thy speech grew rare.

I blame thee not:⁠—this heart, I know,

To be long lov’d was never fram’d;

For something in its depths doth glow

Too strange, too restless, too untam’d.

And women⁠—things that live and move

Min’d by the fever of the soul⁠—

They seek to find in those they love

Stern strength, and promise of control.

They ask not kindness, gentle ways;

These they themselves have tried and known:

They ask a soul which never sways

With the blind gusts that shake their own.

I too have felt the load I bore

In a too strong emotion’s sway;

I too have wish’d, no woman more,

This starting, feverish heart, away:

I too have long’d for trenchant force

And will like a dividing spear;

Have prais’d the keen, unscrupulous course,

Which knows no doubt, which feels no fear.

But in the world I learnt, what there

Thou too wilt surely one day prove,

That will, that energy, though rare,

Are yet far, far less rare than love.

Go, then! till Time and Fate impress

This truth on thee, be mine no more!

They will: for thou, I feel, not less

Than I, wast destin’d to this lore.

We school our manners, act our parts:

But He, who sees us through and through,

Knows that the bent of both our hearts

Was to be gentle, tranquil, true.

And though we wear out life, alas,

Distracted as a homeless wind,

In beating where we must not pass,

In seeking what we shall not find;

Yet we shall one day gain, life past,

Clear prospect o’er our being’s whole;

Shall see ourselves, and learn at last

Our true affinities of soul.

We shall not then deny a course

To every thought the mass ignore;

We shall not then call hardness force,

Nor lightness wisdom any more.

Then, in the eternal Father’s smile,

Our sooth’d, encourag’d souls will dare

To seem as free from pride and guile,

As good, as generous, as they are.

Then we shall know our friends: though much

Will have been lost⁠—the help in strife;

The thousand sweet still joys of such

As hand in hand face earthly life;⁠—

Though these be lost, there will be yet

A sympathy august and pure;

Ennobled by a vast regret,

And by contrition seal’d thrice sure.

And we, whose ways were unlike here,

May then more neighbouring courses ply;

May to each other be brought near,

And greet across infinity.

How sweet, unreach’d by earthly jars,

My sister! to behold with thee

The hush among the shining stars,

The calm upon the moonlit sea.

How sweet to feel, on the boon air,

All our unquiet pulses cease;

To feel that nothing can impair

The gentleness, the thirst for peace⁠—

The gentleness too rudely hurl’d

On this wild earth of hate and fear:

The thirst for peace a raving world

Would never let us satiate here.

IV

Isolation. To Marguerite

We were apart: yet, day by day,

I bade my heart more constant be;

I bade it keep the world away,

And grow a home for only thee:

Nor fear’d but thy love likewise grew,

Like mine, each day more tried, more true.

The fault was grave: I might have known,

What far too soon, alas, I learn’d⁠—

The heart can bind itself alone,

And faith is often unreturn’d.⁠—

Self-sway’d our feelings ebb and swell:

Thou lov’st no more: Farewell! Farewell!

Farewell! and thou, thou lonely heart,

Which never yet without remorse

Even for a moment did’st depart

From thy remote and spherèd course

To haunt the place where passions reign,

Back to thy solitude again!

Back, with the conscious thrill of shame

Which Luna felt, that summer night,

Flash through her pure immortal frame,

When she forsook the starry height

To hang over Endymion’s sleep

Upon the pine-grown Latmian steep;⁠—

Yet she, chaste queen, had never prov’d

How vain a thing is mortal love,

Wandering in Heaven, far remov’d.

But thou hast long had place to prove

This truth⁠—to prove, and make thine own:

Thou hast been, shalt be, art, alone.

Or, if not quite alone, yet they

Which touch thee are unmating things⁠—

Ocean, and Clouds, and Night, and Day;

Lorn Autumns and triumphant Springs;

And life, and others’ joy and pain,

And love, if love, of happier men.

Of happier men⁠—for they, at least,

Have dream’d two human hearts might blend

In one, and were through faith releas’d

From isolation without end

Prolong’d, nor knew, although not less

Alone than thou, their loneliness.

V

To Marguerite⁠—Continued

Yes: in the sea of life enisl’d,

With echoing straits between us thrown,

Dotting the shoreless watery wild,

We mortal millions live alone.

The islands feel the enclasping flow,

And then their endless bounds they know.

But when the moon their hollows lights

And they are swept by balms of spring,

And in their glens, on starry nights,

The nightingales divinely sing;

And lovely notes, from shore to shore,

Across the sounds and channels pour;

Oh then a longing like despair

Is to their farthest caverns sent;

For surely once, they feel, we were

Parts of a single continent.

Now round us spreads the watery plain⁠—

Oh might our marges meet again!

Who order’d, that their longing’s fire

Should be, as soon as kindled, cool’d?

Who renders vain their deep desire?⁠—

God, a God their severance rul’d;

And bade betwixt their shores to be

The unplumb’d, salt, estranging sea.

VI

Absence

In this fair stranger’s eyes of grey

Thine eyes, my love, I see.

I shudder: for the passing day

Had borne me far from thee.

This is the curse of life: that not

A nobler calmer train

Of wiser thoughts and feelings blot

Our passions from our brain;

But each day brings its petty dust

Our soon-chok’d souls to fill,

And we forget because we must,

And not because we will.

I struggle towards the light; and ye,

Once-long’d-for storms of love!

If with the light ye cannot be,

I bear that ye remove.

I struggle towards the light; but oh,

While yet the night is chill,

Upon Time’s barren, stormy flow,

Stay with me, Marguerite, still!

VII

The Terrace at Berne

(Composed Ten Years After the Preceding)

Ten years!⁠—and to my waking eye

Once more the roofs of Berne appear;

The rocky banks, the terrace high,

The stream⁠—and do I linger here?

The clouds are on the Oberland,

The Jungfrau snows look faint and far;

But bright are those green fields at hand,

And through those fields comes down the Aar,

And from the blue twin lakes it comes,

Flows by the town, the churchyard fair,

And ’neath the garden-walk it hums,

The house⁠—and is my Marguerite there?

Ah, shall I see thee, while a flush

Of startled pleasure floods thy brow,

Quick through the oleanders brush,

And clap thy hands, and cry: ’Tis thou!

Or hast thou long since wander’d back,

Daughter of France! to France, thy home;

And flitted down the flowery track

Where feet like thine too lightly come?

Doth riotous laughter now replace

Thy smile, and rouge, with stony glare,

Thy cheek’s soft hue, and fluttering lace

The kerchief that enwound thy hair?

Or is it over?⁠—art thou dead?⁠—

Dead?⁠—and no warning shiver ran

Across my heart, to say thy thread

Of life was cut, and closed thy span!

Could from earth’s ways that figure slight

Be lost, and I not feel ’twas so?

Of that fresh voice the gay delight

Fail from earth’s air, and I not know?

Or shall I find thee still, but changed,

But not the Marguerite of thy prime?

With all thy being re-arranged,

Pass’d through the crucible of time;

With spirit vanish’d, beauty waned,

And hardly yet a glance, a tone,

A gesture⁠—anything⁠—retain’d

Of all that was my Marguerite’s own?

I will not know!⁠—for wherefore try

To things by mortal course that live

A shadowy durability

For which they were not meant, to give?

Like driftwood spars which meet and pass

Upon the boundless ocean-plain,

So on the sea of life, alas!

Man meets man, meets, and quits again.

I knew it when my life was young;

I feel it still, now youth is o’er!

The mists are on the mountains hung,

And Marguerite I shall see no more.