Lines on Leaving a Scene in Bavaria

Adieu the woods and waters’ sideImperial Danube’s rich domain!Adieu the grotto, wild and wide,The rocks abrupt, and grassy plain!For pallid Autumn once againHath swelled each torrent of the hill;Her clouds collect, her shadows sail,And watery winds that sweep the vale,Grow loud and louder still.

But not the storm, dethroning fastYon monarch oak of massy pile;Nor river roaring to the blastAround its dark and desert isle;Nor church-bell tolling to beguileThe cloud-born thunder passing by,Can sound in discord to my soul:Roll on, ye mighty waters, roll!And rage, thou darkened sky!

Thy blossoms now no longer bright;Thy withered woods no longer greenYet, Eldurn shore, with dark delightI visit thy unlovely scene!For many a sunset hour sereneMy steps have trod thy mellow dew;When his green light the fire-fly gave,When Cynthia from the distant waveHer twilight anchor drew,

And ploughed, as with a swelling sail,The billowy clouds and starry sea:Then while thy hermit nightingaleSang on his fragrant apple-tree,—Romantic, solitary, free,The visitant of Eldurn’s shore,On such a moonlight mountain strayedAs echoed to the music madeBy Druid harps of yore.

Around thy savage hills of oak,Around thy waters bright and blue,No hunter’s horn the silence broke,No dying shriek thine echo knew;But safe, sweet Eldurn woods, to youThe wounded wild deer ever ran.Whose myrtle bound their grassy cave,Whose very rocks a shelter gaveFrom blood-pursuing man.

Oh heart effusions, that aroseFrom nightly wanderings cherished here;To him who flies from many woes,Even homeless deserts can be dear!The last and solitary cheerOf those that own no earthly home,Say—is it not, ye banished race,In such a loved and lonely placeCompanionless to roam?

Yes! I have loved thy wild abode,Unknown, unploughed, untrodden shore;Where scarce the woodman finds a road,And scarce the fisher plies an oar:For man’s neglect I love thee more;That art nor avarice intrudeTo tame thy torrent’s thunder-shock,Or prune thy vintage of the rockMagnificently rude.

Unheeded spreads thy blossomed budIts milky bosom to the bee;Unheeded falls along the flooddesolate and aged tree.Forsaken scene, how like to theeThe fate of unbefriended Worth!Like thine her fruit dishonoured falls,Like thee in solitude she callsA thousand treasures forth.

O! silent spirit of the place,If, lingering with the ruined year,Thy hoary form and awful faceI yet might watch and worship here!Thy storm were music to mine ear,Thy wildest walk a shelter givenSublimer thoughts on earth to find,And share, with no unhallowed mind,The majesty of heaven.

What though the bosom friends of Fate,—Prosperity’s unweanèd brood,—Thy consolations cannot rate,O self-dependent solitude!Yet with a spirit unsubdued,Though darkened by the clouds of Care,To worship thy congenial gloom,A pilgrim to the Prophet’s tombMisfortune shall repair.

On her the world hath never smiledOr looked but with accusing eye;All-silent goddess of the wild,To thee that misanthrope shall fly!I hear her deep soliloquy,I mark her proud but ravaged form,As stern she wraps her mantle round,And bids, on winter’s bleakest ground,Defiance to the storm.

Peace to her banished heart, at last,In thy dominions shall descend,And, strong as beechwood in the blast,Her spirit shall refuse to bend;Enduring life without a friend,The world and falsehood left behind,Thy votary shall bear elate(Triumphant o’er opposing Fate),Her dark inspirèd mind.

But dost thou, Folly, mock the museA wanderer’s mountain walk to sing,Who shuns a warring world, nor wooesThe vulture cover of its wing?Then fly, thou cowering, shivering thing,Back to the fostering world beguiledTo waste in self-consuming strifeThe loveless brotherhood of life,Reviling and reviled!

Away, thou lover of the raceThat hither chased yon weeping deer!If Nature’s all majestic faceMore pitiless than man’s appear;Or if the wild winds seem more drearThan man’s cold charities below,Behold around his peopled plains,Where’er the social savage reigns,Exuberance of woe!

His art and honours wouldst thou seekEmbossed on grandeur’s giant walls?Or hear his moral thunders speakWhere senates light their airy halls,Where man his brother man enthralls;Or sends his whirlwind warrants forthTo rouse the slumbering fiends of war,To dye the blood-warm waves afar,And desolate the earth?

From clime to clime pursue the scene,And mark in all thy spacious way,Where’er the tyrant man has been,There Peace, the cherub, cannot stay;In wilds and woodlands far awayShe builds her solitary bower,Where only anchorites have trod,Or friendless men, to worship God,Have wandered for an hour.

In such a far forsaken vale,—And such, sweet Eldurn vale, is thine,—Afflicted nature shall inhaleHeaven-borrowed thoughts and joys divine:No longer wish, no more repineFor man’s neglect or woman’s scorn;—Then wed thee to an exile’s lot,For if the world hath loved thee not,Its absence may be borne.