The Galilean serpent forth did creep, IX. A thousand years the Earth cried, Where art thou? And then the shadow of thy coming fell Frowning o'er the tempestuous sea Of kings, and priests, and slaves, in tower-crown'd majesty ; That multitudinous anarchy did sweep, And burst around their walls, like idle foam, Whilst from the human spirit's deepest deep, Strange melody with love and awe struck dumb Dissonant arms; and Art, which cannot die, With divine wand traced on our earthly home Fit imagery to pave heaven's everlasting dome. X. 'Thou huntress swifter than the Moon! thou terror Of the world's wolves! thou bearer of the quiver, Whose sun-like shafts pierce tempest-winged Error, As light may pierce the clouds when they dis sever In the calm regions of the orient day! Luther caught thy wakening glance: Like lightning, from his leaden lance Reflected, it dissolved the visions of the trance In which, as in a tomb, the nations lay; And England's prophets hail'd thee as their queen, In songs whose music cannot pass away, Though it must flow for ever: not unseen Before the spirit-sighted countenance Of Milton didst thou pass, from the sad scene Beyond whose night he saw, with a dejected mien. XI. The eager hours and unreluctant years As on a dawn-illumined mountain stood, Trampling to silence their loud hopes and fears, Darkening each other with their multitude, And cried aloud, Liberty! Indignation Answer'd Pity from her cave; Death grew pale within the grave, And desolation howl'd to the destroyer, Save! When like heaven's sun, girt by the exhalation Of its own glorious light, thou didst arise, Chasing thy foes from nation unto nation Like shadows: as if day had cloven the skies At dreaming midnight o'er the western wave, Men started, staggering with a glad surprise, Under the lightnings of thine unfamiliar eyes. XII. How like Bacchanals of blood Round France, the ghastly vintage, stood Destruction's sceptred slaves, and folly's mitred brood! When one, like them, but mightier far than they, The Anarch of thine own bewilder'd powers, Rose: armies mingled in obscure array Like clouds with clouds, darkening the sacred bowers Of serene heaven. He, by the past pursued, Rests with those dead, but unforgotten hours, Whose ghosts scare victor kings in their ancestral towers. XIII. England yet sleeps: was she not call'd of old? From Pithecusa to Pelorus Howls, and leaps, and glares in chorus: They cry, Be dim, ye lamps of heaven suspended o'er us. Her chains are threads of gold, she need but smile And they dissolve; but Spain's were links of steel, Till bit to dust by virtue's keenest file. Twins of a single destiny! appeal To the eternal years enthroned before us, XIV. Tomb of Arminius! render up thy dead, Till, like a standard from a watch-tower's staff, His soul may stream over the tyrant's head! Thy victory shall be his epitaph, Wild Bacchanal of truth's mysterious wine, King-deluded Germany, His dead spirit lives in thee. Why do we fear or hope? thou art already free! And thou, lost Paradise of this divine And glorious world! thou flowery wilder ness! Thou island of eternity: thou shrine Where desolation, clothed with loveliness, Worships the thing thou wert! O Italy, Gather thy blood into thy heart; repress The beasts who make their dens thy sacred palaces. XV. O, that the free would stamp the impious name So that this blot upon the page of fame Thou heaven of earth! what spells could pall And cut the snaky knots of this foul gordian word, thee then, In ominous eclipse? A thousand years, Bred from the slime of deep oppression's den, Dyed all thy liquid light with blood and tears, Till thy sweet stars could weep the stain away. Which weak itself as stubble, yet can bind Into a mass, irrefragably firm, The axes and the rods which awe mankind; The sound has poison in it, 'tis the sperm Of what makes life foul, cankerous, and abhorr'd: Disdain not thou, at thine appointed term, O, that the wise from their bright minds would kindle Such lamps within the dome of this dim world, That the pale name of PRIEST might shrink and dwindle Into the hell from which it first was hurl'd, Till human thoughts might kneel alone Of its own aweless soul, or of the power unknown! O, that the words which make the thoughts obscure From which they spring, as clouds of glimmering dew From a white lake blot heaven's blue portraiture, Were stript of their thin masks and various hue, And frowns and smiles and splendours not their own, Till in the nakedness of false and true They stand before their Lord, each to receive its due. XVII. He who taught man to vanquish whatsoever If on his own high will, a willing slave, And power in thought be as the tree within the sced? Or what if Art, an ardent intercessor Diving on fiery wings to Nature's throne, Checks the great mother stooping to caress her, And cries: Give me, thy child, dominion Over all height and depth? if Life can breed New wants, and wealth from those who toil and groan Rend of thy gifts and hers a thousandfold for one. XVIII. Come Thou, but lead out of the inmost cave Wisdom. I hear the pennons of her car To judge, with solemn truth, life's ill-apportion'd lot? Blind Love, and equal Justice, and the Fame thee: If thine or theirs were treasures to be bought By blood or tears, have not the wise and free Wept tears, and blood like tears? The solemn harmony XIX. Paused, and the spirit of that mighty singing When the bolt has pierced its brain; As summer clouds dissolve, unburthen'd of their rain; As a far taper fades with fading night, Droop'd; o'er it closed the echoes far away ODE TO NAPLES.* EPODE 1. a. I STOOD within the city disinterr'd ; † Of spirits passing through the streets; and heard The isle-sustaining Ocean flood, A plane of light between two Heavens of azure: Weigh'd on their life; even as the Power divine, EPODE 11. a. Then gentle winds arose, With many a mingled close Of wild Æolian sound and mountain odour keen; And where the Baian ocean Welters with air-like motion, Within, above, around its bowers of starry green, *The Author has connected many recollections of his visit to Pompeii and Baie with the enthusiasm excited by the intelligence of the proclamation of a Constitutional Government at Naples. This has given a tinge of picturesque and descriptive imagery to the introductory Epodes which depicture these scenes, and some of the majestic feelings permanently connected with the scene of this animating event.-Author's Not + Pompeii Moving the sea-flowers in those purple caves, It bore me like an Angel, o'er the waves I sail'd, where ever flows A spirit of deep emotion, Of the dead kings of Melody.* Louder and louder, gathering round, there wan der'd Over the oracular woods and divine sea Prophesyings which grew articulate ANTISTROPHE α. y. They seize me-I must speak them-be they fate! Didst thou not start to hear Spain's thrilling paan STROPHE a. 1. Naples. thou Heart of men which ever pantest even As sleep round Love, are driven ! Long lost, late won, and yet but half regain'd! Bright Altar of the bloodless sacrifice, Which armed Victory offers up unstain'd Thou which wert once, and then did cease to be, STROPHE 3. 2. Thou youngest giant birth Which from the groaping earth From land to land re-echoed solemnly, Till silence became music? From the Eean* To the cold Alps, eternal Italy Starts to hear thine! The Sea Which paves the desert streets of Venice laughs In light and music; widow'd Genoa wan, By moonlight spells ancestral epitaphs, Murmuring, where is Doria? fair Milan, Within whose veins long ran The viper'st palsying venom, lifts her heel To bruise his head. The signal and the scal (If Hope and Truth and Justice can avail) Art Thou of all these hopes.-O hail! From eyes of quenchless hope Rome tears the priestly cope, Leap'st, clothed in armour of impenetrable scale! As ruling once by power, so now by admiration Last of the Intercessors! Who 'gainst the Crown'd Transgressors Pleadest before God's love! Array'd in Wisdom's mail, Wave thy lightning lance in mirth; Though from their hundred gates the leagued Oppressors With hurried legions move! Hail, hail, all hail! ANTISTROPHE σ.. What though Cimmerian Anarchs dare blaspheme To turn his hungry sword upon the wearer, Shall their's have been-devour'd by their own hounds! Homer and Virgil. An athlete stript to run For the high prize lost on Philippi's shore,- EPODE 1. 3. Hear ye the march as of the Earth-born Forms Of crags and thunder-clouds? Inwrought with emblems of barbaric pride? Dissonant threats kill Silence far away, The serene Heaven which wraps our Eden wide With iron light is dyed, * Exa, the Island of Circe. The viper was the armoria' device of the Visconti, tyrants of Milan The Anarchs of the North lead forth their legions I sift the snow on the mountains below, A hundred tribes nourish'd on strange religions Famish'd wolves that bide no waiting, On Beauty's corse to sickness satiating- and hoary And their great pines groan aghast; While I sleep in the arms of the blast. In a cavern under is fetter'd the thunder, Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion, Lured by the love of the genii that move With fire-from their red feet the streams run Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills, Who spreadest heaven around it, Spirit of beauty! at whose soft command O bid those beams be each a blinding brand Bid the Earth's plenty kill! To make it ours and thine! Or, with thine harmonizing ardours fill And frowns and fears from Thee, Than Celtic wolves from the Ausonian shep- Whatever, Spirit, from thy starry shrine Thou yieldest or withholdest, Oh let be This city of thy worship ever free! September, 1820. THE CLOUD. I BRING fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, bear light shades for the leaves when laid From my wings are shaken the dews that waken When rock'd to rest on their mother's breast, I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under, And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh as I pass in thunder. Over the lakes and the plains, Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream, The Spirit he loves remains; And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile, The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes, As on the jag of a mountain crag, Which an earthquake rocks and swings. In the light of its golden wings. Its ardours of rest and of love, From the depth of heaven above, That orbed maiden, with white fire laden, The stars peep behind her and peer; Are each paved with the moon and these. I bind the sun's throne with a burning zone, When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl. Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof, The mountains its columns be. Is the million-colour'd bow; While the moist earth was laughing below. I am the daughter of earth and water, And the nursling of the sky; I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die. For after the rain, when with never a stain, The pavilion of heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams, Build up the blue dome of air, I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain, Like a high-born maiden In a palace tower, Soothing her love-laden Soul in secret hour With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower: Like a glow worm golden In a dell of dew, Scattering unbeholden Its aërial hue Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from Among the flowers and grass, which screen it Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy. winged thieves. Sound of vernal showers On the twinkling grass, Rain-awaken'd flowers, All that ever was Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass. Teach us, sprite or bird, What sweet thoughts are thinc: I have never heard Praise of love or wine That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. Chorus hymeneal, Or triumphal chaunt, Match'd with thine would be all But an empty vaunt A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. What objects are the fountains Of thy happy strain? What fields, or waves, or mountains? What shapes of sky or plain? What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain? With thy clear keen joyance Languor cannot be: Shadow of annoyance Never came near thee: Thou lovest; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. Waking or asleep, Thou of death must deem Than we mortals dream, Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream? We look before and after, With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. |