The Terrace at Berne (Composed Ten Years After the Preceding.)

Ten years! and to my waking eyeOnce 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 flushOf startled pleasure floods thy brow,Quick through the oleanders brush,And clap thy hands, and cry, ’Tis thou!

Or hast thou long since wandered back,Daughter of France! to France, thy home;And flitted down the flowery trackWhere feet like thine too lightly come?

Doth riotous laughter now replaceThy smile, and rouge, with stony glare,Thy cheek’s soft hue, and fluttering laceThe kerchief that inwound thy hair?

Or is it over? art thou dead?--Dead!--and no warning shiver ranAcross my heart, to say thy threadOf life was cut, and closed thy span!

Could from earth’s ways that figure slightBe lost, and I not feel ’twas so?Of that fresh voice the gay delightFail 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,--Passed through the crucible of time;

With spirit vanished, beauty waned,And hardly yet a glance, a tone,A gesture--any thing--retainedOf 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 passUpon 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 mountain hung,And Marguerite I shall see no more.