Behind are the abandon'd baths[26] 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, Condemn'd to cast about, All shipwreck in thy own weak heart, For comfort from without! A fever in these pages burns Beneath the calm they feign; A wounded human spirit turns, Here, on its bed of pain. Yes, though the virgin mountain-air Fresh through these pages blows; Though to these leaves the glaciers spare The soul of their white snows; Though here a mountain-murmur swells Of many a dark-bough'd pine; Though, as you read, you hear the bells Of the high-pasturing kine-- Yet, through the hum of torrent lone, And brooding mountain-bee, There sobs I know not what ground-tone Of human agony. Is it for this, because the sound Is fraught too deep with pain, That, Obermann! the world around So little loves thy strain? Some secrets may the poet tell, For the world loves new ways; To tell too deep ones is not well-- It knows not what he says. Yet, of the spirits who have reign'd In this our troubled day, I know but two, who have attain'd, Save thee, to see their way. By England's lakes, in grey old age, His quiet home one keeps; And one, the strong much-toiling sage, In German Weimar sleeps. But Wordsworth's eyes avert their ken From half of human fate; And Goethe's course few sons of men May think to emulate. For he pursued a lonely road, His eyes on Nature's plan; Neither made man too much a God, Nor God too much a man. Strong was he, with a spirit free From mists, and sane, and clear; Clearer, how much! than ours--yet we Have a worse course to steer. For though his manhood bore the blast Of a tremendous time, Yet in a tranquil world was pass'd His tenderer youthful prime. But we, brought forth and rear'd in hours Of change, alarm, surprise-- What shelter to grow ripe is ours? What leisure to grow wise? Like children bathing on the shore, Buried a wave beneath, The second wave succeeds, before We have had time to breathe. Too fast we live, too much are tried, Too harass'd, to attain Wordsworth's sweet calm, or Goethe's wide And luminous view to gain.