Adieu to thee again! a vain adieu! There can be no farewell to scene like thine; The mind is coloured by thy every hue; And if reluctantly the eyes resign Their cherished gaze upon thee, lovely Rhine! 'Tis with the thankful glance of parting praise; More mighty spots may rise--more glaring shine,[iv] But none unite in one attaching maze The brilliant, fair, and soft,--the glories of old days, LXI. The negligently grand, the fruitful bloom[310] Of coming ripeness, the white city's sheen, The rolling stream, the precipice's gloom, The forest's growth, and Gothic walls between,-- The wild rocks shaped, as they had turrets been, In mockery of man's art; and these withal A race of faces happy as the scene, Whose fertile bounties here extend to all, Still springing o'er thy banks, though Empires near them fall. LXII. But these recede. Above me are the Alps, The Palaces of Nature, whose vast walls Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps,[iw] And throned Eternity in icy halls Of cold Sublimity, where forms and falls[311] The Avalanche--the thunderbolt of snow! All that expands the spirit, yet appals, Gather around these summits, as to show How Earth may pierce to Heaven, yet leave vain man below. LXIII. But ere these matchless heights I dare to scan, There is a spot should not be passed in vain,-- Morat! the proud, the patriot field! where man May gaze on ghastly trophies of the slain, Nor blush for those who conquered on that plain; Here Burgundy bequeathed his tombless host, A bony heap, through ages to remain, Themselves their monument;[312]--the Stygian coast Unsepulchred they roamed, and shrieked each wandering ghost.[ix][313][13.B.] LXIV. While Waterloo with Cannæ's carnage vies,[314] Morat and Marathon twin names shall stand; They were true Glory's stainless victories, Won by the unambitious heart and hand Of a proud, brotherly, and civic band, All unbought champions in no princely cause Of vice-entailed Corruption; they no land[iy] Doomed to bewail the blasphemy of laws Making Kings' rights divine, by some Draconic clause. LXV. By a lone wall a lonelier column rears A gray and grief-worn aspect of old days; 'Tis the last remnant of the wreck of years, And looks as with the wild-bewildered gaze Of one to stone converted by amaze, Yet still with consciousness; and there it stands Making a marvel that it not decays, When the coeval pride of human hands, Levelled Aventicum,[14.B.] hath strewed her subject lands. LXVI.