Wandering in Heaven, far removed;

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 dreamed two human hearts might blend
In one, and were through faith released
From isolation without end

Prolonged; nor knew, although not less.
Alone than thou, their loneliness.

Yes! in the sea of life enisled,

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 hollow 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 ordered that their longing's fire
Should be, as soon as kindled, cooled?
Who renders vain their deep desire?—
A God, a God their severance ruled!
And bade betwixt their shores to be
The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea

STANZAS IN MEMORY OF THE AUTHOR OF ‹OBERMANN› (1849)

Behind are the abandoned baths

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,
Condemned to cast about,
All shipwreck in thy own weak heart,
For comfort from without!

That, Obermann! the world around
So little loves thy strain?

And then we turn, thou sadder sage,
To thee! we feel thy spell!
-The hopeless tangle of our age,

Thou too hast scanned it well!

Immovable thou sittest, still

As death, composed to bear!
Thy head is clear, thy feeling chill,
And icy thy despair.

He who hath watched, not shared, the strife, Knows how the day hath gone.

He only lives with the world's life

Who hath renounced his own.

To thee we come, then! Clouds are rolled
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-
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
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,

Lake Leman's waters, far below!

And watched the rosy light

Fade from the distant peaks of snow;
And on the air of night

Heard accents of the eternal tongue

Through the pine branches play

The Capital of Pleasures sees
Thy hardly-heard-of grave;-

Farewell! Under the sky we part,
In this stern Alpine dell.
O unstrung will! O broken heart!
A last, a last farewell!

MEMORIAL VERSES (1850)

OETHE in Weimar sleeps, and Greece,

G Long since, saw Byron's struggle cease,

But one such death remained to come; The last poetic voice is dumb--

We stand to-day by Wordsworth's tomb.

When Byron's eyes were shut in death,
We bowed our head and held our breath.
He taught us little; but our soul

Had felt him like the thunder's roll.
With shivering heart the strife we saw
Of passion with eternal law;

And yet with reverential awe

We watched the fount of fiery life
Which served for that Titanic strife.

When Goethe's death was told, we said,-
Sunk, then, is Europe's sagest head.
Physician of the iron age,

Goethe has done his pilgrimage.

He took the suffering human race,

He read each wound, each weakness clear;

And struck his finger on the place,

And said: Thou ailest here, and here!

He looked on Europe's dying hour

Of fitful dream and feverish power;

His eye plunged down the weltering strife.
The turmoil of expiring life —

He said, The end is everywhere,

Art still has truth, take refuge there!
And he was happy, if to know
Causes of things, and far below
His feet to see the lurid flow
Of terror, and insane distress,
And headlong fate, be happiness.