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 shadowed 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 revery, 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.[26]
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 abandoned baths[27]
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.