You
leave us: you will see the Rhine,
And those fair hills I sail’d below,
When I was there with him; and go
By
summer belts of wheat and vine
To
where he breathed his latest breath,
That City. All her splendour seems
No livelier than the wisp that gleams
On
Lethe in the eyes of Death.
Let
her great Danube rolling fair
Enwind her isles, unmark’d of me:
I have not seen, I will not see
Vienna;
rather dream that there,
A
treble darkness, Evil haunts
The birth, the bridal; friend from friend
Is oftener parted, fathers bend
Above
more graves, a thousand wants
Gnarr
at the heels of men, and prey
By each cold hearth, and sadness flings
Her shadow on the blaze of kings:
And
yet myself have heard him say,
That
not in any mother town
With statelier progress to and fro
The double tides of chariots flow
By
park and suburb under brown
Of
lustier leaves; nor more content,
He told me, lives in any crowd,
When all is gay with lamps, and loud
With
sport and song, in booth and tent,
Imperial
halls, or open plain;
And wheels the circled dance, and breaks
The rocket molten into flakes
Of
crimson or in emerald rain.
