V.

SCENERY BETWEEN NAMUR AND LIEGE.

WHAT lovelier home could gentle Fancy choose?
Is this the Stream, whose cities, heights, and plains,
War's favourite playground, are with crimson stains
Familiar, as the Morn with pearly dews?

The Morn, that now, along the silver MEUSE,
Spreading her peaceful ensigns, calls the Swains
To tend their silent boats and ringing wains,
Or strip the bough whose mellow fruit bestrews
The ripening corn beneath it. As mine eyes
Turn from the fortified and threatening hill,
How sweet the prospect of yon watery glade,
With its grey rocks clustering in pensive shade,
That, shaped like old monastic turrets, rise
From the smooth meadow-ground, serene and still!

VI.

AIX-LA-CHAPELLE.

WAS it to disenchant, and to undo,

That we approached the Seat of Charlemaine?
Το sweep
from many an old romantic strain
That faith which no devotion may renew !

Why does this puny Church present to view
Its feeble columns? and that scanty Chair!
This Sword that One of our weak times might wear;
Objects of false pretence, or meanly true!
If from a Traveller's fortune I might claim
A palpable memorial of that day,

Then would I seek the Pyrenean Breach
Which ROLAND clove with huge two-handed sway,
And to the enormous labour left his name,
Where unremitting frosts the rocky Crescent bleach.*

* "Let a wall of rocks be imagined from three to six hundred feet in height, and rising between France and Spain, so as physically to separate the two kingdoms- let us fancy this wall curved like a crescent, with its convexity towards France. Lastly, let us suppose, that in the very middle of the wall a breach of 300 feet wide has been beaten down by the famous Roland, and we may have a good idea of what the mountaineers call the BRECHE de ROLAND.'

VII.

IN THE CATHEDRAL AT COLOGNE.

O FOR the help of Angels to complete
This Temple-Angels governed by a plan
How gloriously pursued by daring Man,
Studious that He might not disdain the seat
Who dwells in Heaven! But that inspiring heat
Hath failed; and now,yePowers! whose gorgeous wings
And splendid aspect yon emblazonings

But faintly picture, 'twere an office meet
For you, on these unfinished Shafts to try
The midnight virtues of your harmony:-
This vast Design might tempt you to repeat
Strains that call forth upon empyreal ground
Immortal Fabrics-rising to the sound
Of penetrating harps and voices sweet!

VIII.

IN A CARRIAGE, UPON THE BANKS OF THE RHINE.

AMID this dance of objects sadness steals
O'er the defrauded heart-while sweeping by,
As in a fit of Thespian jollity,

Beneath her vine-leaf crown the

green Earth reels:

Backward, in rapid evanescence, wheels

The venerable pageantry of Time,

Each beetling rampart — and each tower sublime, And what the Dell unwillingly reveals

Of lurking cloistral arch, through trees espied Near the bright River's edge. Yet why repine? Pedestrian liberty shall yet be mine

To muse, to creep, to halt at will, to gaze: Freedom which youth with copious hand supplied, May in fit measure bless my later days.

IX.

HYMN,

FOR THE BOATMEN, AS THEY APPROACH THE RAPIDS, UNDER THE CASTLE OF HEIDELBERG.

JESU! bless our slender Boat,

By the current swept along;

Loud its threatenings let them not

Drown the music of a Song

Breathed thy mercy to implore,

Where these troubled waters roar !

Saviour, in thy image, seen

Bleeding on that precious Rood;
If, while through the meadows green
Gently wound the peaceful flood,

We forgot Thee, do not Thou
Disregard thy Suppliants now!