By Coblentz, on a rise of gentle ground,
   There is a small and simple pyramid,
   Crowning the summit of the verdant mound;
   Beneath its base are heroes’ ashes hid,
   Our enemy’s,—­but let not that forbid
   Honour to Marceau! o’er whose early tomb
   Tears, big tears, gushed from the rough soldier’s lid,
   Lamenting and yet envying such a doom,
Falling for France, whose rights he battled to resume.

LVI.

   Brief, brave, and glorious was his young career, —
   His mourners were two hosts, his friends and foes;
   And fitly may the stranger lingering here
   Pray for his gallant spirit’s bright repose;
   For he was Freedom’s champion, one of those,
   The few in number, who had not o’erstept
   The charter to chastise which she bestows
   On such as wield her weapons; he had kept
The whiteness of his soul, and thus men o’er him wept.

LVIII.

   Here Ehrenbreitstein, with her shattered wall
   Black with the miner’s blast, upon her height
   Yet shows of what she was, when shell and ball
   Rebounding idly on her strength did light;
   A tower of victory! from whence the flight
   Of baffled foes was watched along the plain;
   But Peace destroyed what War could never blight,
   And laid those proud roofs bare to Summer’s rain —
On which the iron shower for years had poured in vain.

LIX.

   Adieu to thee, fair Rhine!  How long, delighted,
   The stranger fain would linger on his way;
   Thine is a scene alike where souls united
   Or lonely Contemplation thus might stray;
   And could the ceaseless vultures cease to prey
   On self-condemning bosoms, it were here,
   Where Nature, not too sombre nor too gay,
   Wild but not rude, awful yet not austere,
Is to the mellow earth as autumn to the year.

LX.

   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,
   But none unite in one attaching maze
The brilliant, fair, and soft;—­the glories of old days.

LXI.

   The negligently grand, the fruitful bloom
   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.