Canto XCVI

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, unmarked 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.