A printer's boy, folding those pages, Fell slumberously upon one side; Like those famed seven who slept three ages. To wakeful frenzy's vigil rages, As opiates, were the same applied. Even the Reviewers who were hired To do the work of his reviewing, With adamantine nerves, grew tired;Gaping and torpid they retired, To dream of what they should be doing. All grew dull as Peter's self. Were dead to their harmonious strife. The birds and beasts within the wood, The insects, and each creeping thing, Yet all from that charmed district went Over his father's grave. No bailiff dared within that space, For fear of the dull charm, to enter; The yawn of such a venture. MISCELLANEOUS. LINES, WRITTEN DURING THE CASTLEREAGH ADMINISTRATION. CORPSES are cold in the tomb, Stones on the pavement are dumb, And their mothers look pale-like the white shore Her sons are as stones in the way- Then trample and dance, thou Oppressor, Of her corpses, and clods, and abortions—they pave Hearest thou the festival din, Of death, and destruction, and sin, And wealth, crying Havoc! within 'Tis the Bacchanal triumph, which makes truth Thine Epithalamium. Ay, marry thy ghastly wife! Let fear, and disquiet, and strife [dumb, Spread thy couch in the chamber of life, Marry Ruin, thou tyrant! and God be thy guide To the bed of the bride. SONG TO THE MEN OF ENGLAND. MEN of England, wherefore plough Wherefore feed, and clothe, and save, Wherefore, Bees of England, forge Have ye leisure, comfort, calm, The seed ye sow, another reaps; Sow seed, but let no tyrant reap; Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells; With plough and spade, and hoe and loom, SIMILES. FOR TWO POLITICAL CHARACTERS OF 1819. As from an ancestral oak Two empty ravens sound their clarion, Yell by yell, and croak by croak, When they scent the noonday smoke Of fresh human carrion: As two gibbering night-birds flit, From their bowers of deadly hue, Through the night to frighten it, When the morn is in a fit, And the stars are none or few: As a shark and dog-fish wait Wrinkling their red gills the while Are ye, two vultures sick for battle, Two scorpions under one wet stone, Two bloodless wolves whose dry throats rattle, Two crows perched on the murrained cattle, Two vipers tangled into one. AN ODE, TO THE ASSERTORS OF LIBERTY. ARISE, arise, arise! There is blood on the earth that denies ye bread; Be your wounds like eyes To weep for the dead, the dead, the dead. What other grief were it just to pay? Awaken, awaken, awaken! The slave and the tyrant are twin-born foes; Be the cold chains shaken To the dust, where your kindred repose, repose: Their bones in the grave will start and move, When they hear the voices of those they love, Most loud in the holy combat above. Wave, wave high the banner! Be famine and toil, giving sigh for sigh. Glory, glory, glory, To those who have greatly suffered and done! Never name in story Was greater than that which ye shall have won. Conquerors have conquered their foes alone, Whose revenge, pride, and power, they have overthrown: Ride ye, more victorious, over your own. Bind, bind every brow With crownals of violet, ivy, and pine: Hide the blood-stains now With hues which sweet nature has made divine, Green strength, azure hope, and eternity. But let not the pansy among them be; Ye were injured, and that means memory. ENGLAND IN 1819. Ax old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow Through public scorn-mud from a muddy spring, Rulers, who neither see, nor feel, nor know, ODE TO HEAVEN. CHORUS OF SPIRITS. FIRST SPIRIT. PALACE-ROOF of cloudless nights! Paradise of golden lights! Deep, immeasurable, vast, Which art now, and which wert then! Of the present and the past, Of the eternal where and when, Presence-chamber, temple, home, Ever-canopying dome, Of acts and ages yet to come! Glorious shapes have life in thee, Living globes which ever throng And green worlds that glide along; And swift stars with flashing tresses; And icy moons most cold and bright, And mighty suns beyond the night, Atoms of intensest light. Even thy name is as a god, Of that power which is the glass Wherein man his nature sees. Generations as they pass Worship thee with bended knees. Their unremaining gods and they Like a river roll away; Thou remainest such alway. SECOND SPIRIT. Thou art but the mind's first chamber, But the portal of the grave, THIRD SPIRIT. Peace! the abyss is wreathed with scorn What are suns and spheres which flee Drops which Nature's mighty heart Drives through thinnest veins. Depart! What is heaven? a globe of dew, Some eyed flower, whose young leaves waken On an unimagined world: Constellated suns unshaken, ODE TO THE WEST WIND.* 1. O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, Wild Spirit, which art moving every where; II. Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion, Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed, Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge Of the dying year, to which this closing night Of vapours from whose solid atmosphere III. Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams This poem was conceived and chiefly written in a wood that skirts the Arno, near Florence, and on a day when that tempestuous wind, whose temperature is at once mild and animating, was collecting the vapours which pour down the autumnal rains. They began, as 1 foresaw, at sunset, with a violent tempest of hail and rain, attended by that magnificent thunder and lightning peculiar to the Cisalpine regions. The phenomenon alluded to at the conclusion of the third stanza is well known to naturalists. The vegetation at the bottom of the sea, of rivers, and of lakes, sympathizes with that of the land in the change of seasons, and is consequently influenced by the winds which announce it. All overgrown with azure moss and flowers Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below Thy voice and suddenly grow gray with fear, And tremble and despoil themselves: Oh hear ! IV. If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; The impulse of thy strength, only less free I were as in my boyhood, and could be The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven, As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! Poets are on this cold earth, In a cave beneath the sea; Yet dare not stain with wealth or power TO WILLIAM SHELLEY. (With what truth I may say Roma Roma! Roma! Non e piu come era prima!) Mr lost William, thou in whom Which its lustre faintly hid, But beneath this pyramid Thou art not-if a thing divine Where art thou, my gentle child? The love of living leaves and weeds, Among these tombs and ruins wild ; Let me think that through low seeds Of the sweet flowers and sunny grass, Into their hues and scents may pass, A portion June, 1819. ON THE MEDUSA OF LEONARDO DA VINCI, IN THE FLORENTINE GALLERY. Ir lieth, gazing on the midnight sky, Its horror and its beauty are divine. Loveliness like a shadow, from which shrine, Fiery and lurid, struggling underneath, The agonies of anguish and of death. Yet it is less the horror than the grace Which turns the gazer's spirit into stone; Whereon the lineaments of that dead face Are graven, till the characters be grown Into itself, and thought no more can trace; 'Tis the melodious hue of beauty thrown Athwart the darkness and the glare of pain, Which humanize and harmonize the strain. And from its head as from one body grew, Their mailed radiance, as it were to mock And from a stone beside, a poisonous eft Of sense, has flitted with a mad surprise 'Tis the tempestuous loveliness of terror; Of all the beauty and the terror there— FLORENCE, 1819. |