Julia Alpinula :: :: University of Virginia Library

“I know of no human composition so affecting as this, nor a history ofdeeper interest: these are the names and actions that ought not to perish.” Note on the Epitaph of Julia Alpinula. Childe Harold.

JULIA ALPINULA.

“I never heard
Of any true affection but 'twas nipt
With care, that, like the caterpillar, eats
The leaves of the spring's sweetest book, the rose.”
Thomas Middleton.

I.

With rapid wing, in ceaseless flight,
Time sweeps along, and leaves in night,
Each brilliant aim of life's short span,
The joys and agonies of man.
The storied arch that Glory rears,
He mantles with the moss of years;
O'er Beauty's urn in ivy creeps;
Shatters the tomb where Valour sleeps;
And quenches, ne'er to burn again,
The fire in Freedom's awful fane.

He sends the beating wind and shower
Proudly to battle with the tower,
And when in ruin they have rent
Frieze, portico, and battlement,
With scoffing lip he seems to say,
“Weak worm! thou too shalt be as they;
“Soon passion's fire, shall leave thine eye;
“Ambition fade, and feeling die;
“Hope faithless find its splendid trust,
“Thy pride claim kindred with the dust,
“And nothing more of thee remain,
“Than what remembrance views with pain,
“A startling Vision, void and vain.”

II.

As fast and forward flies his car,
His ministers the Seasons are;
If now he sends the Spring with dew
Earth's flowery borders to renew,
Summer, with sunbeam and with song,
To lead the dance of life along,
And viny Autumn's horn to call
Guests to his gorgeous festival,—
It is but with a smile to gild
The ruin which his wrath has willed.

Soon tyrant Winter's whirlwinds urge
The' assault of earthquake, cloud, and surge;
And pestilence and fever's flame
Suck up the breath, or fire the frame.
The rich sun of delight goes down.
In his annihilating frown,
And we but add—of things destroyed,
One atom to the mighty void.
Thus, unregretted, let decay
Our mortal reliques roll away,
To where the wrecks of ages sleep
Unconscious in the' eternal deep;
The glorious Soul its power shall mock:
Whirled into whiteness round the rock,
That pearl of pearls shall issue bright,
A gem of love, a drop of light,
By Mercy's smile from its abode
Drawn to instar the throne of God!
Sorrow and trial in all time
Assault the spirit to sublime;
Even from our very virtues spring
Thoughts which the heart with anguish wring;
Of one so chastened, one whose love
Was such as angels feel above;
Of one who, thus by anguish tried,
O'er him she could not succour, died,—

My lute in pity would essay
To frame a melancholy lay,
For never yet were wept or told
Truths sad as those its strings unfold.

III.

Time has but touched, not sealed in gloom
The turrets of almighty Rome;
The same deep stream which tossed of yore
The infants in their ark ashore,
Whose power, since deified, has piled
This seven-hilled city in the wild,
Yet in its yellow lustre roves
By marble halls and holy groves.
Yet on its mount, the pillared shrine
August, of Jove Capitoline,
Rich with the spoils which war translates,
The plunder of a thousand states,
Though grey with age or thunder's scars,
Looks in proud triumph to the stars,
Its portals passed, its thresholds trod,
By white-robed Flamens of the God.

Ascended by its hundred stairs,
The rough Tarpeian yet declares
His fate who freed its fane too well,
Who vainly watched, and sternly fell.
Structures of piety and prayer,
Domes, towering over temples, there
The busy Forum overlook,—
The scene where Junius Brutus shook
Fiercely his imprecating sword,
And smiled on liberty restored.
And here the Rostrum, at whose foot
Grief rose to rage, and rage grew mute,
As Pity dropt, or Passion flung
Honey, or gall from Tully's tongue.
There, where the great and glorified
On marble pedestals abide,
With Gods that make the skies their home,
The vast Pantheon's pillared dome
Heaves into heaven. With shout and song,
As rushing cars urge cars along,
There the live Circus hums, and spreads
Its gladness o'er ten thousand heads,—
Sons of a race once armed with power
Omnipotent in danger's day,
And still commanding, though their hour
Of earlier worth has passed away:

Though wronged Camillus wars not now,
Nor Cincinnatus leaves his plough,
Mutius a tyrants' wrath disarms,
Fabricius awes, nor Scipio charms,
Nor Regulus his pangs defies,
Looks back on Rome, and grandly dies.

IV.

From infancy a child of guilt,
In blood by evil passions spilt,
Man lays his own foundations deep,
And crime and violence must keep
His stormy height, contested power;—
His bride Ambition—Strife his dower:
By fresh gradations he must win
The apotheosis of sin:
And Priestcraft comes in slavery's aid

Without going far into the subject of the deification of the Cæsars, it may be sufficient to state in proof of the extent to which it was carried, that the glorified Augustus was worshipped as a God, and had a temple erected to him at Lyons. A magnificent altar was consecrated to him, ornamented with sixty pillars, on each of which was graven the name of some conquered city in commemoration of the victory. Three hundred Augurs, and sixty Aruspices were invested with the functions of the worship of the Goddess of Rome and the God Augustus. The first of this new order of priests was one of the principal Eduans. This idolatrous worship extended over all Helvetia.

To deify the wretch they made;
His evil angel then denies,
Or grants him as a curse, the prize.
A happier minion soon shall strip
That laurelled brow to bind his own,
And smile, with satire on his lip,
To slay the slayer on his throne.

Thence in an hour of darkness hurled,
His earthquake-exit rocks the world;
So rose in clouds of crime and war,
The splendour of the Julian star,
And such the shock, which in thy fall,
O Galba! strikes, and startles all.
An awful gulf was that between;
There one red river rolls away
To darkness evermore; a scene
Dreadful to image and pourtray;
As battle, rapine, faction, rage,
Revolt and murder shook the age;
Defiled in pure Religion's robe,
And Peace, if Peace yet lingering near,
Sends forth her turtle o'er the globe
In promise of a lovelier year,—
With far-averted eye bewails
Her vines uprooted in the vales,
And her fired towns, whose ashes fly
To the four quarters of the sky,
Whence, scenting from his northern towers
Warm, warm Campania's orange bowers,
The future Alaric shall sound
His trumpet to the Goths around,
In mirth, through the triumphal shrines
Of Trajan and the Antonines.

Abroad where hoary Ocean smiles,
Fear fills with fugitives the isles,
Flight is security no more,
Blood stains the waters and the shore:
There is no loved remembrance, none,
Of valour fled, and virtue gone;
Senates, once awful and adored,
Are meek and supple to their lord,
And his worst actions glorify
With flattering tongue, and quailing eye.

V.

All, all is changed! age, manhood, youth,
The soul of honour, lip of truth;
The manners of the ages past,
Simple, severe, confiding, chaste,
Are told, if told of, with a sneer,
Fit only for a Cato's ear;
The matron-shade, in which of yore
Volumnia charmed, Cornelia grew,
Whom Romans loved, who Romans bore,
Is fled—almost forgotten too.
To sun themselves in public view,
Is now the pride of Beauty's daughters,

Or at the tesselated bath,
To chide in their capricious wrath,
The slaves who gather from the waters,
And lightly braid with delicate care,
The flow of their redundant air.
In sweeping vestures they depart,
So gently discomposed by art,
That it may seem the wind's delight
To give the embroidered hues to sight;
And when in summer they forsake
Their villas by the Lucrine lake,
And seek the blue, delicious sky
Of Capri or Puteoli,
In galleys, golden at the prows,
On Syrian couches they recline,
The fan of cedar cools their brows,
And roses blush round cups of wine,
While instruments of silver sound
Make glad the waters, dancing round.
Discord dethrones, and household wrath,
The chaste Penates of the hearth.
The charities of kindred fly
Like old Astrea to the sky.
By home-bred faction, slave or son,
Each high-born Lady is undone;

Those whom their pride has piqued, with hate
On them have wreaked a harsher fate,
And they whom no accusing foe
Impleads, have friends to deal the blow.

VI.

Some there are yet who wear, unawed,
Nor slavery's chain, nor murder's sword;
Whose hearts, like harps, have brilliant tones,
If feeling touch, or valour waken,
The sweetnesses an angel owns,
In life devoted, death unshaken.
But when beneath a despot lord
Crime, like a giant walks abroad,
Law's fruitless fences trampling down,
To seize on Power's unstable crown,
The hearts that truth and freedom send
Her failing fortress to defend,
Strive against fate a little while,
Then sink with a despairing smile,
To ruin with the ruined pile
Whilst Love—the daughter, or the bride,
Who clung in life to Valour's side,

Survives, as thought and feeling cast
Their lovely blossoms on the past,
O'er memories of a former day,
To bleed a broken heart away.
Like a young vine, whose tendrils lone
Embrace some hero's funeral stone:
Fixed in a fatal soil, it pines,
Even whilst the season sweetest shines;
In vain the wind, the sun, the dew,
Its weeping beauty would renew;
Faithful to death, its leaf defies
The light of suns, and balm of skies;
The lively colours are defaced;
The boughs run verdantly to waste;
Every day more faint and frail,
It wears in the caressing gale;
Hour by hour the wan leaves strewing,
Hour by hour it hastes to ruin;
And soon its little life is spent
Upon the warlike monument.

VII.

In far Helvetia's mountain land,—
Realm of the torrent and the pine,—

Aventicum's proud turrets stand,
Where lake Moratium's waters shine.
Ere Cæsar yet had overrun
The climes that front the setting sun,
In full defiance of his power,
This splendid City sent its flower,—
A high, severe, heroic race
Who scorned their narrow dwelling place,—
Their seats in lovelier lands to fix,
Beneath the proud Orgetorix.
In dazzling arms that braved the sky,
Rushed forth her Alpine chivalry,
Led onward by the eagle's screams
O'er snowy Jura's sky-born streams.
The sullen Arar groaning, roars
Tormented by their thousand oars;
But, swiftly-footed as the wind,
The deadly Roman hung behind,
And, leagued with the tempestuous Gaul,
Repelled them from Bibracte's wall.
Her bravest slain, her spirit broke,
She bowed her proud neck to the yoke:
Then Roman rites, and Roman rods,
Scourged from their shrines, her Celtic Gods;
New priests were given, new temples rose,
Glittering amid her Alpine snows.

Those virgin snows Diana loved,
The mountain's misty paths she roved,
Rousing with her sonorous horn
The chamois from its couch at morn:
To her a splendid fane was raised,
The altar smoked, the incense blazed,
And mystic hymns were framed, of skill
To charm her from the Aventine hill,
Then rose in light her vexing planet;
Then shook the eternal hills of granite;
The tutelary Goddess came,
And gave the town its Roman name.

VIII.

Though thus her ancient pride was quell'd,
Successive Cæsars lightly held
The golden chains she wore, and Time
Beheld her spirit still sublime
Amid her mountains, far apart
From monarchy, she heard the roar
Of storms that shook its mighty heart,
But felt, herself, the shock no more.
When steady Galba plann'd the doom
Of Nero, bloody wolf of Rome,

A native Chief with just applause
Guarded her liberties and laws:
Julius Alpinus had bewailed
The sufferings of the state, and hailed
Galba who hushed its fierce alarms,
With ready faith and open arms.
Freedom, and fire, and sovereignty,
Were sphered in his majestic eye;
Simplicity of soul, the thirst
That fired the early Romans' veins,
That stir of thousand hearts which burst
With passion at the name of chains;
And the high worth of better days,
Which wreathes the head with glory's rays,
But which in times of evil gloom,
Herald the hero to the tomb.
One only daughter charmed away
His cares from anxious day to day;
For Julia was his life of life,
His star of hope in hours of strife,
His flower of innocence and love,
That drew the sunshine down from Jove.
Gazing on her, a smile and sigh
Would strive with him, she knew not why.
She knew not why—she could not know
How bitter thoughts on sweet ones grow,

When in the daughter's face, we kiss
The mother's charms, those charms which lighted
Our young, romantic hearts with bliss.
The long caressed, the quickly blighted;
When that dear love of early years
Lies low, and cannot heed our tears!

IX.

Pure as the morning's virgin dew
Falling upon the vines of spring,
In blest seclusion Julia grew,
A fairy shape—a spotless thing.
Her home she deemed a little heaven;
She had heard nought of crime and sorrow,
Save in her father's tales at even,
And their remembrance had no morrow.
Till thoughts maturer fixed a trace
Of pensiveness on her sweet face,
And then, as to his neck she clung,
With curious, fond, familiar tongue,
Much would she question of the scar
Which his sagacious forehead bore,
And of the nodding plumes of war,
And why those nodding plumes he wore,

Then wonder at the acts of men,
And pause, and think, and ask again;
But infancy flew lightly on,
And the mind took another tone;
Now gaily gathering vernal flowers,
Now dancing out the summer hours,
Now stripping the autumnal vines,
And now as winter eve declines,
Passing her fairy hand along
The lyre, or in Virgilian song,
Chanting the verse, so sweet and clear,
Which thrills her father's soul to hear.
Where Alpine glaciers, rough and rude,
Hung in an icy solitude;
On lonely hills, beneath the frown
Of pines, that bending o'er the steep,
Sent their prophetic murmurs down,
In inspiration wild and deep;
Where some romantic fountain played,
Or lake spread out its waters blue,
Or valley flowered, or old cascade
Dashed down its waters into dew;
Erewhile she loved to rove, and made
Her soul familiar with the face
Sublime of universal Pan;
Nor mountain soar'd, nor river ran,
But in her pure eye wore the trace

Of Godhead, conversant with man.
In thunder, night, the wind's wild swells,
She heard mysterious oracles,
And strained her spirit to the key
Of their unearthly minstrelsy.
Thus from her infancy, she was
A pupil in the school of dreams,
A gazer in the magic glass,
Wherein the curtained future seems
A spectacle, and a survey,
Half coloured with the hues of day.

X.

And she was beautiful! her face
Was flushed with an angelic grace;
The amorous sun had wooed it too,
And touched it with a richer hue;
But those who gazed might well declare
They could not wish that face more fair.
Her locks of hyacinthine brown,
O'er the white brow hung loosely down,
Contrasting in the shades they throw,
With the blue, loving eyes below.

And in those eyes there shone a ray,
That like a sweet, consuming fire,
Thrilled every soul with chaste desire,
Yet kept all evil things away.
They who but slightly viewed, had said
Pride was her intimate, for tall
She was—and in her lightest tread
Moved like a princess, but of all
That seeming loftiness, the key
Was an inborn nobility;
The spirit's fire, the crowning charm
Of a mind exquisitely warm:
In whose unsullied leaf was wrought
All that was delicate in thought,
And beautiful in deed, with these,
She sought all living things to please,
But most to act a daughter's part
Was the Aurora of her heart.
So grateful for a kindness! kind
Herself in act, and thought, and mind;
Tis true, the assurance was not loud,
But those who heard might more than guess
The resolution deeply vowed;
Her fine eyes swam with tenderness,
And spoke appeal more eloquent
Than words can breathe, or fancy paint.

Their passionate orbs such brilliance haunted,
As soothed by turns, by turns enchanted;
They seemed to chain the gazer's soul
As if with an electric link,
And most he felt their strong controul,
When most their timid glance would shrink.
Like sunshine somewhat spent in shade,
The smile upon her features played;
A glory, bursting half from gloom,
So vividly, and yet so swift,
We cannot fix its transient bloom,
For pleasure's, or for sorrow's gift,
But deem it heaven's own Cherubin,
Lighting the lamp of soul within.
From little less can rise the trance
Of spirit glowing to embrace
Celestial presences, the glance
Which looks abroad through time and space
For one to whom the heart's young glow
Of early love may overflow;
Such glance as Julia loved to cast,
When childhood's rosy hours were past.

XI.

Calm flew those pleasant hours along;
And when with dance, and festal song,
She came in meekness to resign
Youth's girdle at Diana's shrine,
For woman's high and sacred Zone,
Whose clasp, thenceforth, of whitest pearl,
Should temper with reserve, the tone
And fearless frankness of the girl,
Much she admired her statue, much
The stone no mortal's hand might touch;
The horns which cast a lunar glow
O'er forehead, chaste as driven snow;
The lips which breathed of bashfulness,
And that full, uninsculptured eye,
By Genius' most divine excess,
Fixed in the Vision of Virginity:
And though at times her pulse began
With new imaginings to stir,
As if a flood of music ran
Warm through the enthusiast worshipper,
She there remained before the shrine,
To offer to the Power Divine,

That vow which placed her foot within
The ambrosial pale that shuts out sin,
And gave Diana so to win,
In her, the loveliest votarist
That e'er her marble image kissed.

XII.

The fillets of the Goddess shading
Her tresses of the simplest braiding,
The chastest dews which fountains yield
To sprinkle from the silver urn
Upon the marble floor, or burn
Sweet odours in the fire; to gild
The victim's horns; and decorate
With branching palm the sacred gate,
Was long her lot; and voices sent
From vaulted roof and firmament,
Upon her ear in whispers stealing,
The Numen's tutelage revealing,
Would seem to say her life should shine
Of the dark Sisters' whitest twine,
And heaven upon its favourite child,
Could smile not more than now it smiled.
But strong were her affections, moved
At each appeal of those she loved,

And one so fond, and so beguiling,
Ne'er from an unkind world went smiling.
'Twas strange! she was not seen to reap
The flowers or weeds of those that weep;
But they to whom she was most dear,
Who viewed, when nought of grief was near,
The gentle gloom which o'er her cheek
Flew, dimming there its roses meek,
Who in that voice, which had a tone
Of mournful music all its own,
Deep, tuneable, and tender, heard
The chords of passion early stirred,
And oft-times marked her violet eye
Burn bright with sensibility,—
Saw in those workings less the blow
Of beauty, than the birth of woe.
They told, I know not what, of years
Soon darken'd by misfortune's tears;
Of late remembrance o'er a scene
Where joy before had often been;
Of cankers when the heart had blown;
And of the lovely mind o'erthrown,
If e'er one jarring discord wrung
A soul so delicately strung.
Tis ever so! affection feeds
Sometimes on flowers, how oft on weeds!

The luxury of love, or aught
That opens Paradise on thought:
Denied, it sickens; gained with cost,
Tis gained too late, or briefly lost.
When at life's fount the golden bowl
Is broken as the waters roll,
Though bright without it, sunshine flies,
Within, an awful shadow lies.
Around, it bears some sculptured name,
One frenzied word, engraved in flame.
Whilst the pure springs in freshness bound
Upon the fragments scattered round,
Thro' ruin still exists that token,
Tho' fate the cup has broken, broken!

XIII.

It came at last, a fearful time,
Dark with despair, and mad with crime;
A time of terror and of fate
To free Helvetia's mountain state.
When grief no private pang could feel,
In sorrow for the public weal;
When the bright past appeared a blot
Which apathy remembered not;

When the wild present was the slave
Of chance, and tears became the brave;
And all beyond—a deluge dark,
But O, without Deucalion's ark!
With many an omen, passing faith,
Rushed in the flood of war and death;
Bathed in the sweat of agony
Were statues seen, and voices ran
Shrill through the streets, a hollow cry.
Unlike the cry of mortal man.
Victory her brandished arms let fall.
At noon in the pale Capitol.
From Juno's shrine rose angry forms,
Striding the winds, arrayed in storms,
And vanished with a sound more loud
Than thunder in a groaning cloud.
Night's planet wore the dark eclipse,
Earth shook its towns; the seas their ships;
Trees fell from hills, whilst on the wood
A summer calmness seemed to brood.
Floods swept the streets by day; at night
Came startling visions of affright
To priests in their divining cell,
Which they in terror dared not tell.
As silent thro' the squares they passed,
Their eyes upon the pavement cast,

Ill could the anxious people brook
The ghastly anguish of their look.
All faces gathered paleness: Rome
Seemed compassed by the day of doom,
Since on the foreheads of the just
Sate mortal sadness and mistrust.
The oracles no more dissembled,
The Priestess on her tripod trembled.
Fatal night, and angry morning,
She chanted forth her wild forewarning,
Evil dreamt and treason dawning;
Beckoning shapes that led to ruin,
Armed hand the head pursuing,
Deeds, of which there's no undoing,
And the red waves of Phlegethon
In fire for ever rolling on.
At length when every eye was bent
To vision forth the dark event,
The awful secret of the fates
Burst from their adamantine gates,
The bloody dagger struck too well,
And Otho rose as Galba fell.

“Under the government of Nero, the discontent of the people, oppressed by taxes, their contempt, their hatred of the worthless emperor, excited a mighty insurrection in the Helvetian provinces. Julius Vindex, of an illustrious Gallic origin, prefect of the province of the Lingones, revolted against the crowned tyrant, and leagued with Galba, the governor of Hispania, esteemed for his probity and attachment to a strict discipline. The German legions imitated his example. The tragical death of Nero, last of the Cæsarian princes, laid open the empire as a prey to the boldest or most fortunate adventurer. Galba was put in possession of it by his soldiery, but them his economy and severity of discipline displeased. They who dispose of crowns, desire a reward proportioned to the splendid gift. Galba had adopted Piso for his successor: the jealous Otho rose against him, and Galba was assassinated, but the usurper did not long enjoy his elevation to the imperial purple. Vitellius, seeing what might be done with the assistance of an army devoted to its chief, caused himself to be proclaimed emperor by the German legions which he commanded. He set out with them to receive the homage of Rome, Aulus or Alienus Ceeina, one of his generals, preceding him with 30,000 men, and traversing Helvetia. The Helvetians were ignorant of the death of Galba, whose cause they had embraced, and refused to recognise Vitellius. Their chief magistrate, Julius Alpinus, a faithful friend of Galba, confirmed them in their resolution, and engaged them to take up arms.” — Mallet.—Histoire des Suisses, 4 tom. 8vo. Geneve, 1803.

But long before this deed of fear
Could reach the far Helvetian's ear,
The sullen legions of the West,
Had reared the banner and the crest,

And taught their Eagles to take wing
Before a Camp-elected King.
To the first ranks Cecina sprung,
Savage, though brave; though ruthless, young;
Found false by Galba, he had long
His own abasement deemed a wrong,
And now beheld in civil change
A fit arena for revenge.
For this, that murdered Prince's fall
His subtle mind concealed from all;
Thus he made ignorance their guilt,
And vengeance soothed by anguish spilt.
The strength of legions at command,
And Battle's clarion in his hand,
His foot on Gaul—his lowering eye
Turned towards sunbright Italy,
The snows on Jura's soaring crest,
His terrible regards arrest,
His busy Demon whispered there
A glorious victim for his snare;
He heard, and forward as he flew,
The loud, rebelling trumpet blew.
Its barbarous clangor seemed to call
Bellona from her Thracian hall,
And rouse Helvetia to the fears—
The pangs of long forgotten years.

Young Julia, as the clarion spoke,
From all her dreams of joy awoke,
To trace through anguish and alarm,
A father's sword—a patriot's arm.

Or Alpinulus.

XIV.

To him when first the message came,
“Cecina wraps our roofs in flame;”
The heart's blood in its deep abode,
In boiling eddy ebbed and flowed.
But when that ecstacy abates,
He calls the Synod of the States;
Thermopylæ's sepulchred Greeks
Are with his spirit as he speaks.
“Princedoms and powers! from ruined domes,
The wind bears ashes to our homes;
An Anarch comes with fire and sword,
By right unchecked, by guilt unawed,
And we, his haughty yoke beneath,
Must thank him for the bliss to breathe.
Not calmly thus in tower and town
With wrongs your fathers settled down;
They had a blade—once bared, aside
The sheath was cast in Arar's tide.

From this first deed of lawless power,
I see descend a darker hour:
“The scenes which marked in Gaul his track
Of cities razed, of valleys black,
To our dear hills he will transfer—
Fortress no more, but sepulchre?
But if to us high heaven designs
The fall of towers, and blight of vines,
These are but wasted, those o'erthrown,
When what we dare to do is done;
And if we leave the deed unwrought,
We perish; not as freemen ought,
In glorious token of the vow
We took to Galba e'en but now.
Of policy I will not talk,
The hollow statesman's crooked walk;
But yet, methinks, an emperor crowned
In Empire's heart, on Glory's ground,
Is nobler lord than they who clasp
Our country's treasure in their grasp:

The first act of hostility between the army of Vitellius and the Helvetians was perpetrated by the 21st Legion, surnamed the Rapacious, then stationed at Vindomissa, the modern Windish. They forcibly seized as plunder, the money which the Helvetians were sending to pay the garrison of a fort, which Cæsar, on his conquest of the country, had privilaged them to maintain with their own militia.—Vide Tacilus, Hist. Lib 1. cap 67.

Spirits tempestuous, fierce, and wild,
From every brighter hope exiled;
Who, nourished in intestine strife,
Bear treason's flag, and murder's knife.
But I, whate'er may be your lot,
In chains will never, never rot,

Nor sink in shame: a noble mass
Will pour through every Alpine pass
If but one hero slip the word;
There's brightness on my single sword,
To keep its keen edge free from rust,
And light our Fathers from the dust.”

XV.

Slowly the voice of freedom rolls
To quicken life in vulgar souls;
The Chief may lead to glory's brink,
The feeble turn—the timid shrink,—
And if he dares the leap, and dies,
The crowd but point to where he lies,
And to their wondering children tell
How freedom's martyr did, and fell.
Alpinus' speech the rest received
In dumb despair; they heard, and grieved:
The foe was long inured to dare
The fiercest accidents of war,
But when, with all a patriot's pride,
He told of them, the glorified,
In each grey forest, cave and hill,
By prince and peasant worshipped still,

A sullen hum like waves that roar
Afar, ere yet they break ashore,
From lip to lip crept murmuring on,
In the choaked whirlwind's under-tone,
Till one loud shout of rapture fills
The hall, and rolls along their hills.
Many, to whom the chief was dear,
Made vow and promise all sincere;
And some there were, whose envy paid
Dissembled praises long delayed.
These were most courtly of the crowd,
Their praise was long, their flattery loud,
They gave assurance to his fame,
In public, smiles; in private, blame;
“His was too stoical a brow,
“He could not bend, he would not bow.”
They masked beneath the patriot's name,
Their hollow faith, and secret aim,
Till Séverus was given to lead
The battle's ranks to danger's deed,

Tacitus. Hist. Lib 1. cap.68.

XVI.

Like wings through towered Aventicum
It flies, and all the slumbrous hum
And idleness of noon, which late
Reigned wide from city gate to gate,
Is changed at once to deep debate;
To tumult, fierceness, and that strife,
Whose action is the scorn of life.
The peasant leaves his steers afield,
To burnish up the spear and shield;
The warrior leads his horse from stall,
To see how well his fiery hoof
The prance of battle can recal,
In proud expectance of its proof;
The reveller, since the shout is up,
Scorns the loose dalliance of the cup,
And, trampling on that rose, whose bloom
Furnished his garland—takes the plume,
And from the armoury demands
A worthier weapon for his hands;
And as the brazen trumpet flings
Bright images of future things,

Groves tremble, temples shake around,
And vacant theatres resound.
The hum the shout that echoing grew,
Till shore and sky seemed shouting too,—
The stir of crowds—the beating breath
Which dark communion claims with death,—
The change of mighty passions, driven
By freedom's moon, though dark in heaven,
Hope, anger, hatred, pride, despair,
Like billows are conflicting there,
And tell of nerves and sinnews, screw'd
To every torture of the feud.
With all Alpinus mixed,—the soul,
The' informing spark which warmed the whole;
His glance looked lightning, and the throng
Grew silent as he passed along;
The brave as near the patriot came,
Caught a new ardour from his flame;
The wondering coward lost his stare,
Felt not the bristling of his hair,
And watched not now, with wavering mind,
The shadow which he cast behind.

XVII.

The fiery sun has given at last
His unit to the periods past.
His glorious orb, beyond the hill
Of far, blue pines, grew dark, but still
On the lake's bosom, wave on wave
Seemed rubies in the light it gave.

“When the sun descends beyond Mount Jura on a summer evening, the Alpine summits long reflect the ruddy splendour, and the lakes for near an hour assume the appearance of burnished gold.”

—Pinkerton.—vol 1. p. 405.

So a friend of mine writes in his Journal: “In the course of our ride, we had a view of part of the lake of Neufchatel and Morat, on the latter of which the setting sun was diffusing the most glorious hues of crimson light. The waters of the Morat run very dark, and exhibit a singularly beautiful appearance, when penetrated by the deep rays of a declining sun.”

The country around the lake is said to have been named, at one period, Galilee. Murat: (Thes. 1102) mentions a circumstance that may perhaps explain a fact so singular. “Vespasian strengthened Aventicum by a colony of veterans.” This colony probably consisted of some of the legionaries whom Titus had brought back from Asia, after the overthrow of Jerusalem; and the similiarity of the lakes of Morat and Neufchatel with those of Merom and Genesareth, connected in both instances by a river, might strike their fancy not unpleasingly with the recollection of their toils and triumphs in Judæa. So we find Helenus in the city of Buthrotus perpetuating the melancholy remembrance of subverted Troy.

“Procedo, et parvam Trojam, simulataque magnis
Pergama, et arentem Xanthi cognomine rivum,
Agnosco, Scææque amplector limina portæ.”

Virgil. En. Lib. 3. line 347.

Long might you view its rays escape
The veil descending twilight drew;
Long from the heaven's red curtains flew
A colour, making bright the shape,
And attitude of things; the grape,
Hanging in delicate festoons
Round Western windows of saloons,
Looked gem-like, fit to blush or burn
In Bacchus' bowl or Hebe's urn.
But now, O, now! no warrior's soul
May melt that pearl in Beauty's bowl,
And laurels, not the ivy now
Be snatched to wreathe Alpinus' brow.
He marked eve's latest radiant streak
Suburban wall and Alpine peak;

He marked with sighs the creeping shade
From structure on to structure stealing;
But this might be for night delayed,
Or from that deep and tenderer feeling
Which Wisdom to her prophet yields,
Who takes her book, and breaks its seals:
The thought, how soon may thousands reap
The soundness of a soldier's sleep,
And life to them be like the ray
He mourned,—a sunbeam passed away,
A glory gathered in decay,—
A yesterday without a morrow,—
A night that knows no morn of sorrow,
Save in some young survivor's brain
Who never more shall smile again.
He starts—why should a warrior start?
'Tis Nature in a father's heart.
He saw far off the sacred pine,
Which, watered by his Julia's hands
Would grow though sun's refused to shine,—
There—dark and statue-like it stands,
The loveliest tree in all his bowers,
Admired by him in calmer hours;
But now he can not, can not brook
Thereto to turn, thereon to look.

It spoke of all that's blest and pure;
Of happiness that cannot last;
Of hope, but hope may not endure;
And peace, but peace itself is past.
It spoke of a deserted claim,
It seemed to whisper Julia's name.
And must he leave that floor, where first
Her footsteps ran, her charms were nursed?
Leave the sweet tendril which entwined
With each emotion of his mind?
How could he see his daughter's face,
How meet her mournful, mute appeal.
And in her long and last embrace,
And in her voiceless anguish, trace
All that himself must shortly feel,
And in her desolate farewell
See the despair she will not tell.
Oh why should hearts no fears can shake,
With softer feelings bend or break!
He wanders wide,—he lingers late,
Pausing, he treads the longest way,
Then, all impatient of delay.
With swift stride intercepts his fate;
He stands within the Ionic gate—
The gate—the marble hall—alas,
That e'er that hall he must repass!

—She sate, her pale cheek on her hand;
Each drooping eyelash wet with grieving;
She heard his step—she saw him stand—
Nor could resolve her mind's misgiving;
As wilder grew her bosom's heaving,
She raised her blue eye from the floor,—
In him there was no sign of strife,
And steadfastly her glance he bore:
That stoical resolve could tell
To her the dreaded truth too well;
She did not rise—she did not speak
She uttered voice, nor groan, nor shriek,
But low in virgin meekness bowed,
And Nature's daughter wept aloud!

XVIII.

Morn on the mountains! O, how sweet
To catch the first, romantic flow
Of rays that, beautiful and fleet,
Come down to light this world of woe!
When the morn's whitest, earliest flush
Flew from the morrow's gates of pearl,
Rose Julia; if she saw the blush
Of skies, and heard the cataract hurl

Its clear, glad waves down vallies nigh,
It was with sorrow's ear and eye;
That deep misanthrophy of will,
Serene, but gloomy; stern, though still;
Which recks not of sweet sound or sight,
But turns to darkness all delight.
A melancholy figure came
To her high couch as still she slept,
It bore a maiden's faded frame,
It bore the face of one who wept.
By the dim crescent on her crown,
Loose, glistening hair, and purple gown,
The bow and sandals dripping dew,
Her Goddess of the Shades she knew;
Who stood her midnight bed before
With finger beckoning evermore;
Thrice sighed; presaged a deed of dread;
Then fast, with face averted, fled.
Julia awoke: a darkening veil
That instant neared her planet pale;
The next, that orb so beautiful,
Was billowy vapour, grey and dull.
And well from that transfiguring sign
Could she her future doom divine,
But heavenly spirits never slight
Devoted prayer and pious rite,

Nor failed her duteous feet to tread
The temple of the Triune maid,
With orison and holy hymn,
Whilst morn on Jura yet was dim.

XIX.

The timbrels ring; the doors, unfolding
In music on the silver hinge,
Alpinus comes, not now beholding,
Wrapt in a robe of sablest tinge,
Those sculptured walls where Niobe
In marble mourns her guilt away.
From her lost fate he could not borrow
One deeper sentiment of sorrow.
He comes with wisely-guarded lips,
Lest inauspicious words eclipse
The brightness of the fires divine,
Thus onward to the holy shrine,
Where, in her robes pontifical,
Loose locks—a purple flower in all,
And silver censer in her hands,
Serene the priestess-daughter stands,
Now thrice to east, to west she turns,
Then bids her handmaids bring the urns.

Ten virgins, the lit shrine around,
Move, without shadow, without sound.
Some sprinkle coldest dews abroad;
One brings the sacrificial sword,
And in Aventia's guardian name
Strews salt and incense on the flame.
Pity and awe all hearts pervade,
As, kneeling low, the holy maid,
Her white arms on her heaving breast,
The pure Divinity addressed.

1.

Virgin fair!
Who under piny shadows rovest,
Hearing the tasseled horn in caves unlock
The sprightly echo which thou lovest;—
If in happy childhood ere
I made my haunts the sunless rock,
Playing with the springs which well,
Whispering forth thine oracle;
By my dedicated zone.
And a mother's love unknown;
By each vow that did transfer
That dear name to thee from her;

By thine own Latona's love,
Listen, Goddess of the grove!

2.

Holy Queen!
Gladdener of heaven, and earth, and ocean,
Whose unveiled face the Egyptian nightly eyes,
And Syrian, fixt in deep devotion,
On his palmy hills serene,
Isis, or Astarte, rise!
By thy sceptre, bow, and flames,
Hecate of a hundred names!
Or what other name soe'er
Best may suit thy saintly ear;
Thou in whose immortal quest
Purest hearts look loveliest;
Virgin! to a virgin's cry,
Listen, Lady of the sky!

3.

Sister twin!
Reflex of the God of glory,
Whose shield is safety, and whose lyre is life,
Sounding heroes deeds in story,

Lo, thy sanctuary within,
A father arming for the strife!
Let thine accents blandishing,
Lady, rule the Lycian string;
Let round him, in battle's hour,
Egis blaze, and arrows pour!
So may fires eternal shine
Round thy consecrated shrine;
Duly every night and morn,
Dulcet honey dew thy horn:
Sacred Sister of the brave!
In heaven or hell, by grove or wave,
Virgin Goddess! hear and save.

XX.

A beam of glory as she rose,
Bright as the sunrise upon snows,
Was seen to light her iris first,
Then round her lips in brilliance burst.
Near to the altar's fire she drew,
And in her sweetest incense threw.
The precious offering slumbered not,
But in an odorous column shot
To the high dome aloft, and thence
Returned in clouds of redolence.

Shook the lit statue; and a blaze
Which even celestial eyes might daze,
In starry coronal adorns
The awful head, and lunar horns.
One moment burned the unruffled light,—
Wavered—and all again was night.
With chanted hymn the sacred hind,
Stainless as snow, and fleet as wind,
From dallying with the flowers that bound,
Chain-like, her beauteous frontal round,
Led to the altar, strives to fly
And fills the temple with her cry.
And as the appointed virgin brings
The silver sword, aloft was heard
The clangour of resounding wings,
And lo! within, the Thunderer's bird
Shot, and his broad brown pinions spread
Darkly around the victim's head;
Then, as the crashing ram breaks down
The walls of a beleaguered town,
Buried in brains the enormous beak;
Oh! it was terrible to hear
The tortured animal's strong shriek
Of passion, agony, and fear,
Becoming momently more weak.—

It strove, but vainly strove, to free
Its eyes from the bewildering wing;
A struggle yet—it may not be!
It lies a lifeless, bloody thing,
And the fierce bird abroad has fled,
With eye more wild, and talons red.
All stood astonished and aghast!
But when its evil plumes were passed,
There stole along the pillared fane
An unimaginable strain:
At once so musical and holy,
So sweet, so sad, so melancholy,
The fatal pæan touched and stirred
To instant sorrow all who heard;
That none, when hushed its dirge of grief,
But felt in silence some relief;
Yet, though the sound was fraught with pain,
Wished for its ravishing voice again.
At that prophetic sound and sign,
Fear shook the Priestess of the shrine:
She knew the God who rules the sky
Had given the fateful bird to fly;
And, with her waving arm forbade.
Renewal of the rites delayed.
To the wail of flutes with mourning hearts,
The long processional departs.

Alone, and with a warrior's pride,
Alpinus stands by Julia's side.
Each ornament of sacrifice
From her disrobed, before her lies:
When next her lips essayed to speak,
The voice was tremulous and weak.

XXI.

“Oh yet, my father! for thy life
The coming storm of battle shun,
Thou seest that Jove forbids the strife,
Nor Dian, nor Latona's son,
Whate'er their favouring power, can move
The fixt allmightiness of Jove.
Too well I know the blood that runs
Through thy dear veins but ill can brook
A scorn upon our warrior sons:—
Nay, spare the lightning of thy look.
Nor early let thy spirit see
The drooping thing I soon shall be!
Sad though the accents of my tongue,
I would not do thy glory wrong.
But who that saw such omens rise
From the clear depth of shrines and skies,

E'er shunned the slighted sign and lives,
Though blest with all that valour gives,
To me is given the fearful skill,
In planetary hours like this,
To read in light the secret will
Of destiny—Oh, spare me this!
For sable are the shapes I see,
And hurried are the shrieks I hear;
And those that charge, and those that flee,
And those that frown, and those that fear,
Are gathered, gathered, gathered near.
For shivered upon every hill,
The hero's weapons shall be spread,
And loud cascade and gushing rill
Shall long roll down our darkened dead.
As Jura's clouds nor pause nor flag,
But sweep alike o'er vale and crag;
As from his snows of thousand ages,
The loud, blue Rhenus bursts and rages;
A chieftain comes, who overwhelms
The strengh of Capitols and realms.
By the wild waters of this eye,
Which ne'er before has wept to any,
Oh, meet not thou his battle cry!
Brave not his bands, for they are many.
My bliss has ever been thy care,
When wert thou deaf to Julia's prayer!

Upon thy knees, thy neck I hang.
No mother lives to share my pang.
Why is thy brow so sternly bent?
Relent, my father, yet relent!
Speak—but one word in tenderness,
Speak—in thy fond, indulgent tone;
When I am quite companionless,
Oh, all alone! Oh, all alone!
When Thou, my sire, liest cold and low,
No clarion then to break thy sleep,
And when the fierce, insulting foe,
Passing, points at me as I weep,
And cries, “this is the warrior's daughter
“Who led his country's sons to slaughter,”
Oh! whither then shall Julia rush,
To hide the burning tears that gush!
The flowers—the mountains—wood, and wave,
Thy loved remembrance will recal:
I shall but ripen for the grave,
Thus lonely, scorned, abandoned all!
I never could survive to burn
Thy ashes for the silent urn,
And shrunk to that dark atom, see
My hope, my love, my life in thee:—
No! no! I fear, I feel, that first
This frame will melt, this heart will burst!”

Large, brilliant tears her voice impeded,
More strongly, tenderly, they pleaded.
That sight Alpinus could not brook;
He lost the firmness of his look;
And all to tenderness resigned,
Shook like a reed before the wind:
Groaning, he held his robe to hide
The gathering anguish as it grew,
“My dear, dear child! though all beside
Forsake thee, and thy father too,—
Thy prayers, thy piety, thy love
Will call a saviour from above
To guard thy sire, to calm thy fears;
Weep not! I cannot bear thy tears.
Our country! in that sacred word
A thousand oracles are heard;
Hers—I am hers—but still to thee
All that her son should dare to be.”
Low at the altar, faint and pale
As she, whose senses flit or fail,
He knelt: “this maid in life and death
“To thee, Diana, I bequeath:”
In all the martyrdom of woe
He gained the dreaded portico;
Thence flung, with feeling overwrought,
One look—of love surpassing thought:

She smiled—that dreadful smile had more
Of bitterness than all before.

XXII.

When by some loved one left, we brood
In sorrow's peopled solitude,
On every dear, remembered token,
The tear last shed, the word last spoken;
When turning to the far off clime
He roves, we feel a mood sublime,
Still, meditative tender, deep,
Too sad to smile, too blest to weep,
Passive the intellectual Mind
As an Eolian harp, inclined
To be in glorious music kissed
By heaven's free breezes as they list,—
Awful as angels from their homes
The spirit of the Absent comes,
Bringing its temper and its tone
To touch, to soothe, or shade our own.
If gladness warms, we feel the glow;
If anguish strikes, we share the blow;
Should terror reign, or danger lower,
The dark dominion has its hour.

We know not why, but yet we grieve,
It is not fancy's dream we weave,
For we would willingly forego
That prescient sense of coming woe,
That night-mare of a mind awake
Which aches, and cannot cease to ache.
Ah no! we feel 'tis truth that rolls
Those prophet-shadows o'er our souls;
And soon, too soon! does Time unveil
The fatal proof that turns us pale.
'Tis the quick sympathy which binds,
Congenial hearts, commingling minds;
Love's second-sight, unsealed to such
As feel his immaterial touch;
Link of the chain which shall unite
The souls of all whose Love is Light,
When purified by every tear
Which washed the stains that dimmed us here,
We speak, we commune, we embrace,
Not needing sound, unchecked by space.

XXIII.

Such prescience of misfortune fell
On Julia in her temple cell.

In every tear, in every sigh,
She knew the hour of trial nigh,
Feared, wavered, trembled, hoped, but still
Terror rose potent over will,
And hope grew like that burning streak,
The death-spot on Consumption's cheek;
Till certainty of woe delayed
Threw o'er her heart its icy shade,
And on her face the marble air
Of mute, but palpable despair,
Calm of more terrible potent
Than Frenzy's loud abandonment.
The one is as a storm from heaven
O'er lake Moratium's waves and pines,
When once with them the gust has striven,
It sinks—the lake in silver shines,
And heaven again on wave and grove
Looks forth in gentleness and love:
But that is like the Asphaltine lake,
The slumber of whose waveless glass
No storm can move, no thunder shake,
It lies a deep, unsparkling mass,
In its eternity of rest,
Dark, cheerless, barren, and unblest.
Yes! though a little longer spared
The stroke which Destiny prepared,

Yes! though uncertain of the blow
Which wrought her country's overthrow,
Thy heights, Vocetius, witness bore
The blow was struck, the struggle o'er.
Upon that mountain's mossy head,
A tragic spectacle was spread;
In front by stern Cecina pressed,
The Rhetian phalanx in their rear,
They struck, they fell, and many a breast
Resigned its high ambition here.

XXIV.

The thunder has its lull from riot,
The morning storm its evening quiet;
The raving and rebellious Ocean,
Its crystal calm, its rest from motion;
The avalanche its silence, when
That thundering ball has rocked the glen;

For the following splendid and sublime description of Montblanc and the descent of an avalanche, written amidst the Alpine scenes where it was witnessed, I am indebted to the kindness of the friend, whose name has already graced this volume. The spirited stanzas themselves will be my best apology for their introduction in this place:

'Tis Night,—and Silence with unmoving wings
Broods o'er the sleeping waters;—not a sound
Breaks its most breathless hush;—the sweet moon flings
Her pallid lustre on the hills around,
Turning the snows and ices that have crowned—
Since Chaos reigned—each vast and searchless height
To beryl, pearl, and silver;—whilst profound,
In the still waveless lake reflected bright,
And girt with arrowy rays, rests her full orb of light.

The' eternal mountains momently are peering
Through the blue clouds that mantle them,—on high
Their glittering crests majestically rearing,
More like to children of the infinite sky
Than of the dædal earth:—triumphantly,—
Prince of the whirlwind—monarch of the scene—
Mightiest where all are mighty;—from the eye
Of mortal man half hidden by the screen
Of mist that moats his base from Arve's dark, deep ravine,

Stands the magnificent Montblanc!—his brow
Scarred by ten thousand thunders;—most sublime,
Even as though risen from the world below
To watch the progress of Decay;—by clime,—
Storm—blight—fire—earthquake injured not;—like Time,
Stern chronicler of centuries gone by,
Doomed by an awful fiat still to climb,
Swell, and increase with years incessantly,
Then yield at length to thee, most dread eternity!

Hark! there are sounds of tumult and commotion
Hurtling in murmurs on the distant air,
Like the wild music of a wind-lashed ocean!—
They rage, they gather now;—yon valley fair,
Still sleeps in moonbright loveliness; but there,
Methinks a form of horror I behold
With giant stride descending! 'Tis Despair
Riding the rushing avalanche, now rolled
Form its tall cliff—by whom? what mortal may unfold!

Perchance a gale from fervid Italy
Startled the air-hung thunderer;—or the tone
Breathed from some hunter's horn,—or it may be
The echoes of the mountain cataract thrown
Amid its voiceful snows, have thus called down
The overwhelming ruin on the vale;
Howbeit a mystery to man unknown,
'Twas but some heaven-sent power that did prevail,
For an inscrutable end its slumbers to assail.

Madly it bursts along,—even as a river
That gathers strength in its most fierce career;
The black and lofty pines a moment quiver
Before its breath,—but as it draws more near
Crash—and are seen no more!—fleet-footed Fear,—
Pale as that white-robed minister of wrath,—
In silent wilderment her face doth rear,
But, having gazed upon its blight and scathe,
Files with the wild Chamois from its death-dooming path!

The purple Simoom its light tread
When prostrate Caravans lie dead;
The earthquake its still under-tone,
Its whisper of the murders done.

And battle—which in the wide fall
Of nations blends the rage of all,
Its hush of passions, and the sleep
Of energies once strong and deep.
The earthquake-shout which shook yon hill
Of pines, is over; all is still;
Save the cry of the shrill gale,
Sad as a shrieking spirit's wail;
Save the wild birds' flapping wings,
Now fluttering over lifeless things;
Save the lone gush of mountain springs;
And clamour of cascades that leap
Stainless from their aerial steep,
But rolling redly from the plain
Where lie the Proud and Mighty slain:
Rigid and nerveless every hand,
That grasped the battle-axe and brand;
Pallid each brow; each glazed eye set,
But scowling fierce defiance yet;
The fiery heart of former years,
With all its wishes, hopes, and fears,
Its pride—its pain—its might—its mirth—
A pulseless ball of wasting earth;
The plume and scarf by Beauty woven,
Daggled in blood; the helmet cloven;
The pennons proud, of yesterday
Borne by the gallant and the gay,

In life's last agony resigned,
Forlornly waving in the wind.—
Another's harp may bear away
The blazon of that fierce affray,
But, Freedom! I will never show
Thy dread anatomy of woe.

The mountain, according to Saussure, continually increases in magnitude.

XXV.

O War! thou miscreating curse!
Dark Juggler of the universe!
How hast thou marred this glorious globe!
Throwing round thee thy scarlet robe,
And masking with the rainbow's blaze
Of gemlike beauty thy fierce face;
Thou hast deceived from Time's first ages,
Its mighty Captains, lords, and sages,
Till they and the strong multitude
Thy mad, remorseless smiles have wooed;
And, drunk with thy bewildering song
From horn, or harp, or cymbalon,
Done deeds which might the lion shame,
And make the nations pale to name.
For Priests, their mitres are thy mirth,
Thy panders are the kings of earth:

From their high Pagods dost thou come
Charioted, with the hideous hum
Of thousands, who, where'er it reels,
Perish beneath thy waggon wheels:
When given the groaning death they ask,
Thy visage thou dost then unmask,
Like the Veiled Fiend of Khorrassan,
And on thy wolfish brow we scan
The thunder-graven mark of Cain,
Heaven's warning impress, stamped in vain;
Eyeballs that act the Gorgon's part,
A hydra's head, a viper's heart,
The penal fire around whose core,
Shall redly burn for evermore!

XXVI.

Heaven's angry Angel pour wrath on thee, War!
Ambition and Cruelty harness thy car,
And Ruin, and Rapine, and fell Decay,
Herald thee on thy blighting way.
Thou cancellest Treaty at thy nod,
Crumblest the robes of the Priest God;
On the palace of kings and the peasant's cot
Thou turnest thy visage and they are not;

Where thy hurricane hurtles, a capitol burns,
And infancy's ashes fill innocent urns.
Wrath on thee, War! thou hast given to the tomb
Tens of thousands to dread the day of doom;
Thou hast fixed on the age that is rolling by,
The terrible charm of the rattle-snake's eye;
They have come to thy altar with fire and spell
To people the chambers of death and hell.
Yet royalty smiles, and yet Beauty vows,
They crown thee with laurel and myrtle-boughs;
And minstrels throng to their hallowed spring,
Thy sanctioned homicides to sing;
Dealing to nations a frenzied fire,
Sorrow to mercy, and shame to the lyre!

XXVII.

Princess of mountain, flood, and fell!
Helvetia! to thy crown—farewell!
Weep! for thy patriots hopes are o'er;
Weep! for thy freedom is no more;
For those who live, and those who sleep
In death's cold chains of bondage, weep!
'Tis morn! (how can the morn look gay
On the lost field of yesterday?)

The clouds which form the sun's pavilion,
Are rolled in beautiful vermilion,
Nor one faint shape of sadness wear,
For all the thousands bleeding there.
The ibex comes as it was wont
At sunrise to the crystal font,
But starts with trembling foot aside
In horror of the waters dyed.
No human voice or footstep fills
The echo of the lonely hills;
Nor in the valley's depths, below,
Is sound or sight of living foe;
But from deep woods the shepherd's eye
Sees the grey smoke curl loftily,
And there deserted hearths are mute
To all but the invader's foot:
Their household flames which used to shine
Brightly upon bright faces, now
But light the torch that fires the vine,
And the loved cottage-roof below.
With weeping, and the voice of wail,
The peasants leave their native vale,
And joining those who yet survive
The battle, but have ceased to strive,
And bearing forward those who lie
Weary and wounded down to die,

Retreat upon the capitol,
And tell the fatal truth to all.
By every fierce emotion tossed,
Their brave hemmed in, abandoned, lost,
We may forgive if the sad City
Then sent to move a victor's pity,
On whom the passions of the camp
Have fixed Misrule's licentious stamp.
Whilst many a mother, many a son,
Widowed or orphaned, all undone,
Hot tears in gloomy anguish shed,
Whilst each one shook with grief or dread,
What pangs of terror and despair,
Had Dian's holy maid to bear?

XXVIII.

That cruel question ask not now,
But gaze on the faint form reclining
Within yon pillared portico,
Desponding, pale, but unrepining.
The virgins round are all in tears,
And some in loud lament; but she—
Alas! the keenness of her fears
Stifles those drops of agony,

Leaving alone the sense of pain
Busy about her heart and brain.
Her mien, though marked by grief intense,
Betrays no hurried negligence;
The tangles of her auburn hair
Are braided with accustomed care;
And taste's pure fingers have imprest
The foldings of her mourning vest;
But yet her eye has lost a glow
Of that sweet fire which gladdened so,
And each long lash which shades the eye
Falls as a black pall awfully,
To shut out sunshine from the temple
Where joy exists not; her lips tremble
As if in agonies and fears
With what in her deep soul she hears.
Ye guardian Gods! her father doomed!
It was as though a trumpet sounded
Through the young heart reflection wounded,
For quickly then she reassumed
Her purpose, to affection sweet,
Too sweet for even dread to shun,
But all too venturous, all unmeet
For her. She, pale afflicted one!
Her veil smoothed from the ruffling wind,
The scattered ringlets thrown behind,

By those, her weeping sisters, tended,
The temple's marble steps descended.
She passes, in the public path,
The Circus and columnar bath;
The legendary Pillar, grey
With growing mosses of decay;
The Amphitheatre, the mount
Of pines above the Claudian fount,
Then treads the long Moratian way.
The awed spectators melt, and bless
Her filial love her loveliness;
Each had some grief and the kind tone
Which pitied hers, relieved his own.
The sullen warrior turned aside,
The woman in his eyes to hide;
The infant smiled through first alarms,
And stretched to her its little arms;
And beauty sighed as she passed by,
And felt a charm in every sigh.

XXIX.

The armed Impérator of Gaul
Sate lordly in the judgment hall.
Guarded by lictor, axe, and spear,
The glorious criminal was near.

Around the crowd, who came to see
Their conqueror cursed, or chieftain free.
From their indignant lips was sent
Nor cry, nor popular lament.
The astonished look, and the live ear
Catching each sound, alone were here.
No lull, no strife; no rest, no riot;
But such a blank and awful quiet,
As speaks, more strongly than debate,
Both mighty dread, and mighty hate.
The volume of a people's rage
Condensed into one burning page;
The coil of a convolving snake,
Unhissing, but with folds awake.
Then from without was heard to come
A whispered sound, a fretful hum,
Within the stir of countless heads,
And lo! that floor their Priestess treads.
The crowd fall back, and hoarsely grow
Their accents of controlless woe.
Cecina twice essayed to quell
The sound, but something like a spell
Was felt upon his heart to draw
A shade of that remorse and awe
Which, in the presence of the Good,
By guilt so well is understood.

And much he wished, but could not flee
The anguish of a daughter's plea.
She came—bowed—knelt—yes, even to him!
Raising the lovely eyes that swim
In hope's wild eagerness, to trace
On his stern brow one ray of grace.
“Mercy! Oh, mercy!” word beside
She uttered not, for the full tide
Which long in its deep fount had slept
Rushed forth, and then indeed she wept,
Oh, how convulsively!

XXX.

A thrill
Of feeling, sorrowful yet sweet,
At this pathetic, brief appeal
Of Beauty prostrate at his feet,
Was seen to chase Cecina's frown
And soothe each harsher impulse down:
Mute, fascinated as he eyed
Affection's triumph over pride,

He sate, and passed his hand across
His brow, in pity or remorse,

In representing Cecina as affected at the supplication of the daughter of his victim, I have perhaps ascribed to him a virtue, which, young as he was, he never could possess. He stands recorded in History “as a man of violence, cruelty, and blood.” Tacitus has painted his character in a few powerful strokes. “Cecina rioted in greater spoil and more blood than Valens. He was naturally tempestuous and fierce; he longed passionately for war, and proceeded always to take vengeance for every offence within his reach, as fast as it was committed, before the offender had time to claim the merit of repentance and submission.” Whilst he held the office of quæstor in Bœtica, he had revolted to Galba, by whom he was afterwards prosecuted for embezzling the public money. Furiously resenting this, he determined “to excite a spirit of universal confusion and revolt, and with the miseries of the state to hide his own private wounds.” Hence his industrious concealment of the death of Galba, and the unappeasable hatred which he bore to Alpinus.

And strove to spare her added pain,
The knowledge that the prayer was vain.
“Arise,” he said, “young child of woe!
“A saviour rise—a daughter go.
“Lictors! your axes turn away
“From the freed prisoner:”—they obey.
He waves his arm the signal known,
They guard Alpinus from the throne.
Julia upraised her silent eye
And looked the joy she could not speak;
The purple glow which modesty
Lighted in her transparent cheek,
Passed by unfelt, so deep her mood
Of extacy and gratitude.
She turned to see, as in a glass,
Her father's face reflect the gladness
Of her so happy heart—alas,
It was the very soul of sadness!
Too well he knew that single crime
Which tyrants never can forgive,
And scorning in despair sublime
The trustless word that bade him live,
He paused, and looked as he withdrew,
The passion of a last adieu.

Resumed his firm, his princely stride,
And then, like one all fire and pride
Who seeks, not shuns, the approaching doom
Which makes his death a martyrdom,
He reached the court; he bared his head;
The features of each frowning knight
He calmly scanned; “and if,” he said,
“My country's weal requires it—smite!”
They smote; and ere the eager shout
Was o'er, which hailed his passing out,
Alpinus was a brilliant name,
The sealed Impérator of fame;
A spirit, o'er whose earthly urn
It is almost a sin to mourn;
A sire, in whose celestial mind
Pain can no answering feeling find,
But whose paternal eye yet keeps
Its watches o'er a child that weeps.

Tac. Hist. Lib 1. c. 53.

XXXI.

But thou, base Consul, Judge unjust,
False, smiling Traitor to thy trust!

The noble Author of Childe Harold, in his beautiful Stanzas devoted to the fate of Julia in the third Canto of that celebrated Poem, says—

“Justice is sworn 'gainst tears, and hers would crave
The life she lived in—but the judge was just.”

With the latter sentiment I cannot coincide. We have seen that the motives which urged Cecina to take vengeance upon the Helvetians, were founded in private pique—we have seen the folds of his sanguine spirit unveiled to us by the hand of one of the most skilful painters of human character—his concealment of the death of their acknowledged Emperor, has been adverted to— and can we then say that the sentence of him who was at once the accuser, judge, and executioner, was impartial, or avoid perceiving in Alpinus, not the traitor to the majesty of the Roman Law—but the victim to a traitor's guile? Just it might be considered by the decretals of war, whose fierce prerogative it has ever been to dispose of the conquered according as caprice or evil passion has the humour of the hour. Cecina was a Conqueror, and the justice of conquerors resembles too uniformly, I am afraid, that of the Commissioners of Sparta upon the unfortunate Platæans who survived the celebrated siege of their surrendered city. The after history of Cecina furnishes at once a moral to my tale, and a striking instance of retributive punishment. He revolted with his licentious army from Vitellius to Vespasian, when the star of this general was rising in the ascendant, but his army resumed their allegiance, and cast him into irons. They released him, in order to supplicate for them with Antonius. “But as soon,” says Tacitus, “as he approached, arrayed and attended with Lictors, and the robes of state, and passed in the pomp of a Consul, rage seized the conquering host. With his pride they bitterly upbraided him,—with his cruelty; nay, such is the abhorrence naturally annexed to deeds of villainy, that they even upbraided him for his revolt.” Antonius furnished him with a guard, and sent him on to Vespasian. In the Senate at Rome, the fatal sentence was passed upon him—the senators simultaneously declaring their abhorrence “that he who was Consul should thus have betrayed the Commonwealth; he who was general, his emperor; he, upon whom had been lavished riches so vast, and public honours so many, his friend and benefactor.” So perished the judge of Julius Alpinus!

Thou, who couldst view with eye unwet,
A nation's star of glory set,

Who given by justice to sustain
The fasces of her awful reign,
Didst dare her function to pervert,
And wring the Roman from thy heart,—
The time shall come, when scorned, belied,
The fool of perfidy and pride,
Thou for thine own vile life shall plead,
With none to pity, none to heed;
When, bound thyself in iron thongs,
And taunted by a thousand tongues,
Thou too shall feel of all abhorred,
The keenness of a victor's sword.
Haste to Bedriacum along!
Armed vengeance deems thy loitering long,
Her flaming eye is on thy path,
To hail the vassal of her wrath.
Then—when thy robes so richly gay
By ruffian hands are rent away;
Then—when the future cannot bring
One hope upon its hurrying wing;
When drooping, trembling, frenzy-tossed,
Ambition wrecked, and honour lost;
To fling into thy cup of gall
A drop, the bitterest far of all,
Shall Memory whisper calm and clear,
That word into thy thrilling ear,

Shall bid thee of Alpinus think,
Seize the dark bowl, and dying, drink!

Tac. Hist. Lib. 3. c. 31.

XXXII

There is a pang which cannot find
An answering language in the mind;
There is a woe which only awe
With hallowed hand might dare to draw,
But feeling all her powers would fail,
Lets fall the Grecian Painter's veil.
O earth! that thou shouldst ever nurse
Thy children to a doom like this!
To fear no more, but feel thy curse,
Poor bankrupts in deserted bliss!
Who cannot yield—though weak and vain
All that reflection wrings from pain,
One tear, though but of wretchedness,
To make despair's convulsion less.
The mariner, by ocean's shock
Tossed bleeding on its beaten rock,
To gaze for ever as it raves
On its green solitude of waves,
Though not one plank in sight there be,
To bear him o'er that shoreless sea,

Has hope; the guilty criminal
Led sentenced from the judgment-hall,
Though in the stupor of his heart,
Pale as a statue he depart,
Has hope; the fainting wretch who stands
Deserted upon desert sands,
Where not a single human sound
Electrifies the silence round,
Has hope; the captive in his tower,
Blind to the light, and stripped of power,
Has hope; when hope begins to fail,
Some late reprieve or passing sail
Bears them again with favouring breeze
To fortune and to freedom—these
Have hope;—the mourner left alone
Last of her kindred race has none.
No aim to live, no gentle tone
To hear, to gain, to give—no, none!
No shared caress, no sigh to prove
Content in suffering or in love;
No friend, to whom her tongue can own
That life was once a joy—no, none!
All now is over: passions perish,
For what has passion left to cherish?
The world flows on; suns rise and set
Without perception or regret.

A little sense of former dread;
A little thought of what is dead;
A little numbering up the sum
Of days that darken ere they come;
A sudden flash through memory's night
That all her reasonings are not right;
A little tracing round and round
The spot where anguish struck the wound;
A trance—a vigil—and a fit—
O'er the cold tomb she cannot quit;
And all beside is wasting flame,
The bloodless lip, the sleepless frame,
So meek, so wan, so passive, death
Has nought of stillness to bequeath.

XXXIII.

Yes, they have come! morn, noon, and night,
The starlight rest, the morrow's waking,
Nor left for Julia of their flight
One record, but a young heart breaking.
She seeks, 'tis true, her own-loved bower,
And in her ringlets wreathes the flower,
That only, which decay though slight
Has just, but just begun to blight;

And shakes the censer o'er the flame,
Pronouncing some half-murmured name.
But Oh! the pause when none are nigh,
Unconscious that the flower is taken,
The deep, involuntary sigh,
With which the holy bowl is shaken,
All speak a language to the eye,
Which cannot, cannot be mistaken.
And sometimes she would lean her head
Upon the virgins who surrounded,
And say there was a dream of dread
Which all her waking thoughts confounded,
A flitting form of some one dead;
She knew not why it so much wounded.
But she must gather palm and myrtle,
And see her hind, and feed the turtle,
Which her dear father's ear each spring
Soothes with perpetual murmuring.
“My father! wherefore did he go?
“It was unkind! the days were many;
“He was not wont to leave me so!
“Oh, if he e'er be seen by any,
“I charge you, by my love, make known
“To him that I am all alone!”
Then will she gently turn away,
And seek the holy shrine to pray,

And look with an expectant eye,
Abrupt to every passer-by.—

XXXIV.

Upon her cheek corroding woe
No deeper whiteness now can throw;
For fever has begun to shed
A delicate spot of tender red,
Which as it lessened to the view,
More strongly set, and brighter grew.
It was a tinge of that last flame,
Which burns to dust the mortal frame,
As sunlight upon mountain-snows
Flings all the beauty of the rose,
Warm in their whiteness works the ray,
And melts the beautiful mass away.
The glassy splendour of her eye
Already sparkled of the sky;
The kindling of a world of bliss,
For it was not the light of this.
Their heavenly lustre, strongly shining,
Sadly contrasted with the chill
White lids, which o'er them hung declining,
And droop in nerveless langour still,

And lightly watch, and deeply close,
In passion of a long repose.
Through all, her forehead bears the stamp
Of a tranquillity sublime,
But yet so dewy, cold, and damp,
It seems that Death her lovely lamp
Would quench before its time.

XXXV.

The leaf is yellowing on the tree;
Glad o'er the blossom hums the bee;
The sun declining from his height
Sends down to earth a heaven of light,
Not sad, though soft—not gay, though glowing;
The deep, clear lake has stilled its flowing;
The boat, within its waters glassed,
Feels not a breath of air blow past;
Not one small bird we hear to tune
Its bill beneath the mellow noon;
But blue-eyed girls of fairy shapes
With simple hymns to fill the vallies,
As from the vines they pluck the grapes,
And press them, purpling Autumn's chalice,
And earth below, and sky above,
Are full of quiet, full of love.

'Twas in the twilight of that eve,
Julia the last time walked abroad;
The hue—the hour—the water's heave—
And splendid sky her spirit awed.
Then brought the sweet south wind to soothe,
Warm from the blooms she nursed in youth,
A fading breath, a fragrance sere,
In funeral of the withered year.
It came, it played with odorous wings,
Upon her lyre's thrice holy strings,
Which oft, when day had ceased to roll,
She touched to soothe her father's soul.
That odour of decay, that tone
Across her languid senses blown,
Whispering divinely of the praise,
The endearments of departed days,
Unlocked, as with a golden key,
The long-sealed springs of memory.
The air was bliss, the music balm,
Her quick heart fluttered at the charm,
And she was soothed; her gentle mind
All things renewed, recalled, combined,
She loved and lived o'er all again,
If not with pleasure, not with pain;
For pain she felt had lost its sting,
Death had no bitterness to bring;

Refined from passions earthly shade,
O, what was life but bliss delayed!
She looked to heaven; the darkening blue
Melted into her heart like dew;
That heart was happy, and though night
Was gathering quickly o'er it, bright,
She felt her passing hour was come,
And pined for her Elysian home.

XXXVI.

She rose; she bade her sisters bring
The purest waters of the spring
For her lavations: from the chest
Of cedar took her funeral vest,
And the dark veil of death; then crowned
With palm the household altar round,
Before the portal whereon lay
The last rich light of dying day;
Paid to Diana the last prayer,
And her unbound, luxuriant hair,
Severed to virgin Proserpine,

Proserpine, or Diana Inferna, presided over the death of mankind, and according to the opinion of the ancients, no one could die, if the Goddess herself, or Atropos her minister, did not cut off one of the locks of the head. From this belief, it was usual to cut off some of the hair of the dying, and to strew it at the portal of the house, as an offering for Proserpine. See the Alcestis of Euripides. The custom was probably derived from the sacrifices, in which it was usual to cut some hairs from the forehead of the victim, and to throw them into the flames: so the dying person was considered as a victim to the infernal powers.

With offered cups of sable wine.
Worn with the affecting toil, the train
Her footsteps tenderly sustain

To the sad couch, and watch around,
Veiled—without motion, without sound.

XXXVII.

The lamp at midnight hung untrimmed,
The air was hush, the chamber dimmed;
Just then the moon on Julia's face
Shed a mild ray of gloom and grace.
She felt it—half unclosed her eye,
And smiled; it was a blissful thing,
That her beloved Deity,
Should watch her spirit taking wing.
“I come,” she whispered, “where are you,
“My friends? O, draw the darkening veil!
“I go—Elysium swims in view,
“Farewell! a dear, a last farewell!”
And she is gone: a gentle sigh,

Lord Byron, in the stanza already commented on, observes

------“Her heart beneath a claim
“Nearest to heaven's, broke o'er a father's grave.”

Third Canto, stanza 66.

I am not aware of any authority for giving this a literal interpretation. But few writers upon Switzerland have noticed the affecting catastrophe. Briefe uber die Schwitz by Meiner, Berlin, quotes the epitaph, calls Julia a “beautiful young Priestess,” and thinks her death “brought on by excess of grief.” Genave und unstœndliche beschreibung Helvitscher Geschichte, Zuric, by Lauffer, alludes to the circumstance, and says in addition, that she followed her father to the tomb with voiceless grief—the lamentation of silence. Matthisson's Letters to Bonstetten, the friend of Gray, written in German, inform him that “Julia did not long survive the stroke of her father's death, but followed him to the grave in the earilest bloom of life.” He concurs with every one else, as to the touching simplicity of her epitaph.

A quivering of the hand she pressed,
Faint as the kiss of infancy,
Her fluttering spirit fixed in rest.
“Farewell!” O, pure, unsullied truth,
The sage in years, the bloom of youth,
Pain, pity, candour, filial duty,
Undying love, angelic beauty,

And tenderness in toil untired,
In that pathetic word expired!

XXXVIII

As o'er the lines by others writ,
In lettered solitude I sit,
Or, turning from their pages, sing
Fictitious trifles to the string,
Thy tale of truth, to feeling dear,
Will rise, and claim her holy tear.
I would not thy pure memory stain
With aught that breathes of human pain,
But in thine own Transalpine clime,
view the fragments strewed by Time;
His line of ruin stretched o'er all—

“The line of confusion and the stones of emptiness” are indeed stretched over the once splendid city of Aventicum. Occasional remains of the exterior wall, the broken shell of the ancient Amphitheatre, and one isolated turret, are all that now remain, but the relics which at various times have been discovered—urns, vases, cornices of columns, altars, inscriptions, baths, ruined aqueducts, bas-reliefs, statues, and tesselated pavements,—all attest its ancient magnificence. The foundation of the City is hid in the night of Time: from the researches of Mons. Wild, Librarian of Berne, it would seem to have been founded 589 years before Christ. It was in the zenith of its splendour during the reign of Vespasian, from 469 to 477. Flavius Sabinus, the father of that prince, came to reside here, bringing with him the riches which he had amassed in Asia. It is probable that the early years of Vespasian were also passed in Aventicum. Tacitus calls it the Capital of Helvetia, and an inscription is yet to be seen in the church of the modern Avenches, which makes mention of it in these terms: Colonnia pia, Flavia constans emerita Aventicum Helvetiorum. It was dismantled by the Alemanni, and Ammianus Marcellinus writes, at the end of the fourth Century—“In the neighbourhood of the Penninian mountain lies Aventicum, now deserted, but whose splendid remains point out its former flourishing state. The circumference of its walls is still to be seen, a solitary pillar stands in the midst of a meadow, like that of the superb temple of Juno at Samos: grass grows in the Amphitheatre, and the plough strikes on statues, altars, tombs, mighty walls, and other traces of ancient opulence.”

Agricola, incurvo terram molitus aratro,
Exesa inveniet scabrâ rubigine pila:
Aut gravibus rastris galeas pulsabit inanes,
Grandiaque effossis mirabitur ossa sepulchris.

Virg.—Georg 1. 494.

Attila overthrew it to its foundation during the following century. Matthisson, who visited it a few years since, observes that the city occupied a large square, the great extent of which is accurately defined by the town-wall, distinguishable in many places. In summer, particularly, if the weather be dry, the streets are still discernible in many places, by the long streaks running in parallel lines, and at right angles, where the grass is scattered very thinly, on account of the little depth of earth over the pavement.

Arch, column, altar, crumbling wall,
The ruined shrine, the sword in rust,
The Urn that held thy virgin dust,
The simple legend of thy grief,

The pathetic Inscription to the memory of Julia Alpinula, was discovered at Aventicum two centuries ago. Gruter, in his valuable “Inscriptiones Antiq. totius orbis Romani,” has preserved a fac-simile of the tablet and inscription. The latter differs slightly from the one quoted by Lord Byron: it runs thus— AVENTICI.JVLIA. ALPINVLA. HIC. JACBO. INFELICIS. PATRIS. INFELIX. PROLES. DEÆ AVENT. SACERD.EXORARE. PATRIS. NECEM. NON. POTVI. MALE. MORI. IN. FATIS. ILLI. ERAT.VIXI. ANNOS. XXIII.

The column spoken of by Ammianus Marcellinus is yet standing. It is of the Corinthian order, 37 feet high, and is seen on the left in a garden very nigh the city on the side of Morat. The fragment of an inscription was found near it in 1536, bearing the name of Vespasian, whence it is probable that the column formed part of a portico erected in honour of that prince. The inhabitants gave it the name of The Storks, from the bird's having been long accustomed to build her nest there. This accidental circumstance gives a hallowed association to that lonely relique, and affords to the moral fancy a beautiful and significant emblem. The Stork sitting upon that solitary Pillar! It is as if the spirit of Julia yet haunted the ruin, that she might still speak to the human heart from forth the shadows of deserted empire— of piety and filial love, as of an indestructible principle, outbraving the eloquent epitaphs of man, and surviving the wreck of his most splendid monuments.

And dark o'er them the Ivy-leaf.
And can I cease, whilst Spring renews
Thy turf with her divinest dews,—
Oh, can I cease to keep for thee
One tear from selfish sorrow free!
No! let the Ivy hide the spot,
Thou art not, shalt not be forgot!