III. 1. Mona, thy Druid-rites awake the dead! Rites that have chained old Ocean on his bed. Shivered by thy piercing glance, Pointless falls the hero's lance. Thy magic bids the imperial eagle fly, And blasts the laureate wreath of victory. Hark, the bard's soul inspires the vocal string! At every pause dread Silence hovers o'er: While murky Night sails round on raven-wing, Deepening the tempest's howl, the torrent's roar; Chased by the Morn from Snowdon's awful brow, Where late she sate and scowled on the black wave below. III. 2. Lo, steel-clad War his gorgeous standard rears! And mow thro' infancy and age; Veiling from the eye of day, Penance dreams her life away; In cloistered solitude she sits and sighs, While from each shrine still, small responses rise. *See Tacitus, 1. xiv. c. 29. + This remarkable event happened at the siege and sack of Jerusalem in the last year of the eleventh century. Matth. Paris, IV. 2. Hear, with what heart-felt beat, the midnight bell Beyond this nether sphere, on Rapture's wing of fire. III. 3. Lord of each pang the nerves can feel, Flushed with youth, her looks impart Each fine feeling as it flows; Her voice the echo of a heart Pure as the mountain-snows: She smiles! and where is now the cloud Grim darkness furls his leaden shroud, Her touch unlocks the day-spring from above, And lo! it visits man with beams of light and love. YES, 'tis the pulse of life! my fears were vain; *After a Tragedy, performed for her benefit, at the Theatre Royal in Drury-lane, April 27, 1795. Blanching each honest cheek with deeds of night, Can she, with fiction, charm the cheated mind, Is here no other actress, let me ask. Believe me, those, who best the heart dissect, First, how her little breast with triumph swells, |