I in the world must live; but thou,
Thou melancholy shade!
Wilt not, if thou canst see me now,
Condemn me, nor upbraid.
For thou art gone away from earth,
And place with those dost claim,
The children of the second birth,
Whom the world could not tame;
And with that small transfigured band,
Whom many a different way
Conducted to their common land,
Thou learn’st to think as they
Christian and Pagan, king and slave,
Soldier and anchorite,
Distinctions we esteem so grave,
Are nothing in their sight.
They do not ask, who pined unseen,
Who was on action hurled,
Whose one bond is, that all have been
Unspotted by the world.
There without anger thou wilt see
Him who obeys thy spell
No more, so he but rest, like thee,
Unsoiled; and so, farewell!
Farewell! Whether thou now liest near
That much-loved inland sea,
The ripples of whose blue waves cheer
Vevey and Meillerie;
And in that gracious region bland,
Where with clear-rustling wave
The scented pines of Switzerland
Stand dark round thy green grave,—
Between the dusty vineyard-walls
Issuing on that green place,
The early peasant still recalls
The pensive stranger’s face,—
And stoops to clear thy moss-grown date
Ere he plods on again;
Or whether, by maligner fate,
Among the swarms of men,—