The Galilean serpent forth did creep,
And made thy world an undistinguishable heap.

IX.

A thousand years the Earth cried, Where art thou?

And then the shadow of thy coming fell
On Saxon Alfred's olive-cinctured brow:
And many a warrior-peopled citadel,
Like rocks which fire lifts out of the flat deep,
Arose in sacred Italy,

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?
Spain calls her now, as with its thrilling thunder
Vesuvius wakens Etna, and the cold
Snow-crags by its reply are cloven in sunder:
O'er the lit waves every Æolian isle

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,
In the dim West; impress us from a seal,
All ye have thought and done! Time cannot
dare conceal.

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
Of**** into the dust! or write it there,

So that this blot upon the page of fame
Were as a serpent's path, which the light air
Erases, and the flat sands close behind!
Ye the oracle have heard:
Lift the victory-flashing sword,

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,
To set thine armed heel on this reluctant worm.
XVI.

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,
A scoff of impious pride from fiends impure;

Till human thoughts might kneel alone
Each before the judgment-throne

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
Can be between the cradle and the grave,
Crown'd him the King of Life. O vain en-
deavour!

If on his own high will, a willing slave,
He has enthroned the oppression and the oppressor.
What if earth can clothe and feed
Amplest millions at their need,

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
Of man's deep spirit, as the morning-star
Beckons the Sun from the Eoan wave,

Wisdom. I hear the pennons of her car
Self-moving, like cloud charioted by flame;
Comes she not, and come ye not,
Rulers of eternal thought,

To judge, with solemn truth, life's ill-apportion'd lot?

Blind Love, and equal Justice, and the Fame
Of what has been, the Hope of what will be!
O, Liberty! if such could be thy name,
Wert thou disjoin'd from these, or they from

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
To its abyss was suddenly withdrawn;
Then, as a wild swan, when sublimely winging
Its path athwart the thunder-smoke of dawn,
Sinks headlong through the aerial golden light
On the heavy-sounding plain,

When the bolt has pierced its brain; As summer clouds dissolve, unburthen'd of their rain;

As a far taper fades with fading night,
As a brief insect dies with dying day,
My song, its pinions disarray'd of might,

Droop'd; o'er it closed the echoes far away
Of the great voice which did its flight sustain,
As waves which lately paved his watery way
Hiss round a drowner's head in their tempestuous
play.

ODE TO NAPLES.*

EPODE 1. a.

I STOOD within the city disinterr'd ; †
And heard the autumnal leaves like light foot-
falls

Of spirits passing through the streets; and heard
The Mountain's slumberous voice at intervals
Thrill through those roofless halls;
The oracular thunder penetrating shook
The listening soul in my suspended blood;
I felt that Earth out of her deep heart spoke-
I felt, but heard not:-through white columns
glow'd

The isle-sustaining Ocean flood,

A plane of light between two Heavens of azure:
Around me gleam'd many a bright sepulchre
Of whose pure beauty, Time, as if his pleasure
Were to spare Death, had never made erasure;
But every living lineament was clear
As in the sculptor's thought; and there
The wreaths of stony myrtle, ivy and pine,
Like winter leaves o'ergrown by moulded snow.
Seem'd only not to move and grow
Because the crystal silence of the air

Weigh'd on their life; even as the Power divine,
Which then lull'd all things, brooded upon mine.

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,
Even as the ever stormless atmosphere
Floats o'er the Elysian realm,

It bore me like an Angel, o'er the waves
Of sunlight, whose swift pinnace of dewy air
No storm can overwhelm;

I sail'd, where ever flows
Under the calm Serene

A spirit of deep emotion,
From the unknown graves

Of the dead kings of Melody.*
Shadowy Aornos darken'd o'er the helm
The horizontal ether; heaven stript bare
Its depths over Elysium, where the prow
Made the invisible water white as snow;
From that Typhæan mount, Inarime
There stream'd a sunlike vapour, like the standard
Of some ethereal host;
Whilst from all the coast,

Louder and louder, gathering round, there wan

der'd

Over the oracular woods and divine sea Prophesyings which grew articulate

ANTISTROPHE α. y.

STROPHE a. 1.

Naples. thou Heart of men which ever pantest
Naked beneath the lidless eye of heaven!
Elysian City, which to calm enchantest
The mutinous air and sea! they round thee,

even

As sleep round Love, are driven !
Metropolis of a ruin'd Paradise

Long lost, late won, and yet but half regain'd! Bright Altar of the bloodless sacrifice,

Which armed Victory offers up unstain'd
To Love, the flower-enchain'd!

Thou which wert once, and then did cease to be,
Now art, and henceforth ever shall be, free,
If Hope, and Truth, and Justice can avail.
Hail, hail, all hail !

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,

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;
Nor let thy high heart fail,

Though from their hundred gates the leagued

Oppressors

With hurried legions move! Hail, hail, all hail!

ANTISTROPHE σ..

What though Cimmerian Anarchs dare blaspheme
Freedom and thee? thy shie d is as a mirror
To make their blind slaves see, and with fierce
gleam

To turn his hungry sword upon the wearer,
A new Acteon's error

Shall their's have been-devour'd by their own hounds!

Homer and Virgil.

An athlete stript to run
From a remoter station

For the high prize lost on Philippi's shore,-
As then Hope, Truth, and Justice did avail,
So now may Fraud and Wrong! O hail!

EPODE 1. 3.

Hear ye the march as of the Earth-born Forms
Array'd against the ever-living Gods?
The crash and darkness of a thousand storms
Bursting their inaccessible abodes

Of crags and thunder-clouds?
See ye the banners blazon'd to the day,

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

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

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
Things more true and deep

Than we mortals dream,

Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal

stream?

We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest

thought.