Still in my soul the voice I heard Of Obermann! away I turned; by some vague impulse stirr'd, Along the rocks of Naye And Sonchaud's piny flanks I gaze, And the blanch'd summit bare Of Malatrait, to where in haze The Valais opens fair, And the domed Velan, with his snows, Behind the upcrowding hills, Doth all the heavenly opening close And glorious there, without a sound, High in the Valais-depth profound, I saw the morning break. THE FUTURE. A WANDERER is man from his birth. He was born in a ship On the breast of the river of Time; Brimming with wonder and joy He spreads out his arms to the light, Rivets his gaze on the banks of the stream. As what he sees is, so have his thoughts been. Whether he wakes Where the snowy mountainous pass, Echoing the screams of the eagles, Hems in its gorges the bed Of the new-born clear-flowing stream; Where the river in gleaming rings Sluggishly winds through the plain; Whether in sound of the swallowing sea As is the world on the banks, So is the mind of the man. Vainly does each as he glides Fable and dream Of the lands which the river of Time Had left ere he woke on its breast, Or shall reach when his eyes have been closed. Only the tract where he sails He wots of; only the thoughts, Raised by the objects he passes, are his. Who can see the green earth any more The tribes who then roam'd on her breast, What girl Now reads in her bosom as clear As Rebekah read, when she sate At eve by the palm-shaded well? Who guards in her breast As deep, as pellucid a spring Of feeling, as tranquil, as sure? Of God, of the world, of the soul, With a plainness as near, As flashing as Moses felt, When he lay in the night by his flock On the starlit Arabian waste? Can rise and obey The beck of the Spirit like him? This tract which the river of Time Now flows through with us, is the plain. Gone is the calm of its earlier shore. Border'd by cities, and hoarse With a thousand cries is its stream. And we on its breast, our minds Are confused as the cries which we hear, Changing and shot as the sights which we see. And we say that repose has fled For ever the course of the river of Time. That cities will crowd to its edge In a blacker incessanter line; That the din will be more on its banks, Denser the trade on its stream, Flatter the plain where it flows, Fiercer the sun overhead. That never will those on its breast See an ennobling sight, Drink of the feeling of quiet again. But what was before us we know not, Haply, the river of Time, As it grows, as the towns on its marge On a wider, statelier stream- And the width of the waters, the hush |