VII. Then Rome was, and from thy deep bosom fairest, By thy sweet love was sanctified; Faint echoes of Ionian song; that tone VIII. From what Hyrcanian glen or frozen hill, Or piny promontory of the Arctic main, Or utmost islet inaccessible, Didst thou lament the ruin of thy reign, Of that sublimest lore which man had dared unlearn? And made thy world an undistinguishable heap. IX. A thousand years the Earth cried, Where art thou? Frowning o'er the tempestuous sea With divine want 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 dissever 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 hailed thee as their In songs whose music cannot pass away, [queen, 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. See the Bacchæ of Euripides. 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 Answered Pity from her cave; Death grew pale within the grave, And desolation howled 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. Thou heaven of earth! what spells could pall thee In ominous eclipse? A thousand years, [then, 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; How like Bacchanals of blood Round France, the ghastly vintage, stood Destruction's sceptered slaves, and Folly's mitred brood! When one, like them, but mightier far than they, The Anarch of thine own bewildered powers, Rose armies mingled in obscure array, Like clouds with clouds, darkening the sacred Of serene heaven. He, by the past pursued, [bowers Rests with those dead but unforgotten hours, Whose ghosts scare victor kings in their ancestral towers. XIII. England yet sleeps: was she not called of old? From Pithecusa to Pelorus Howls, and leaps, and glares in chorus: [us. They cry, Be dim, ye lamps of heaven suspended o'er Her chains are threads of gold, she need but smile And they dissolve; but Spain's were links of Till bit to dust, by virtue's keenest file. [steel, 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 wilderness! 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 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, And cut the snaky knots of this foul gordian word, The axes and the rods which awe mankind; The sound has poison in it, 'tis the sperm Of what makes life foul, cankerous, and abhorred; 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 hurled, 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! Othat 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 And power in thought be as the tree within the 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 [groan, New wants, and wealth from those who toil and 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-apportioned 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 disjoined from these, or they from If thine or theirs were treasures to be bought [thee: 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 ; Drooped; 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. ARETHUSA. ARETHUSA arose From her couch of snows In the Acroceraunian mountains,— Shepherding her bright fountains. Streaming among the streams ;— Which slopes to the western gleams : In murmurs as soft as sleep; The earth seemed to love her, And Heaven smiled above her, As she lingered towards the deep. Then Alpheus bold, On his glacier cold, With his trident the mountains strook; And opened a chasm In the rocks;-with the spasm All Erymanthus shook. And the black south wind The urns of the silent snow, And earthquake and thunder Seen through the torrent's sweep, To the brink of the Dorian deep. "Oh, save me! Oh, guide me! And under the water Fled like a sunny beam; With the brackish Dorian stream: Alpheus rushed behind, As an eagle pursuing Down the streams of the cloudy wind. Under the bowers Where the Ocean Powers Sit on their pearled thrones : Which amid the streams Are as green as the forest's night: Under the ocean foam, And up through the rifts They passed to their Dorian home. And now from their fountains Down one vale where the morning basks, They ply their watery tasks. At sunrise they leap In the cave of the shelving hill; When they love but live no more. SONG OF PROSERPINE, WHILE GATHERING FLOWERS ON THE PLAIN OF ENNA. SACRED Goddess, Mother Earth, Thou from whose immortal bosom, Gods, and men, and beasts have birth, Leaf and blade, and bud and blossom, Breathe thine influence most divine On thine own child, Proserpine. If with mists of evening dew Thou dost nourish these young flowers Till they grow, in scent and hue, Fairest children of the hours, Breathe thine influence most divine On thine own child, Proserpine. HYMN OF APOLLO. THE sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie, Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes,Waken me when their Mother, the grey Dawn, Tells them that dreams and that the moon is gone. Then I arise, and climbing Heaven's blue dome, I walk over the mountains and the waves, Leaving my robe upon the ocean foam; My footsteps pave the clouds with fire; the caves Are filled with my bright presence, and the air Leaves the green earth to my embraces bare. The sunbeams are my shafts, with which I kill Fly me, and from the glory of my ray I feed the clouds, the rainbows, and the flowers, Are cinctured with my power as with a robe; Whatever lamps on Earth or Heaven may shine Are portions of one power, which is mine. I stand at noon upon the peak of Heaven, For grief that I depart they weep and frown: What look is more delightful than the smile With which I soothe them from the western isle! I am the eye with which the Universe Beholds itself and knows itself divine; All harmony of instrument or verse, All prophecy, all medicine are mine, All light of art or nature;-to my song Victory and praise in their own right belong. HYMN OF PAN. FROM the forests and highlands From the river-girt islands, Where loud waves are dumb Listening to my sweet pipings. The cicale above in the lime, Liquid Peneus was flowing, In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing The light of the dying day, This and the former poem were written at the request of a friend, to be inserted in a drama on the subject of Midas. Apollo and Pan contended before Tmolus for the prize in music. Speeded with my sweet pipings. The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns, And the nymphs of the woods and waves, To the edge of the moist river-lawns, And the brink of the dewy caves, And all that did then attend and follow, Were silent with love, as you now, Apollo, With envy of my sweet pipings. I sang of the dancing stars, I sang of the dædal Earth, I pursued a maiden and clasped a reed : It breaks in our bosom and then we bleed: All wept, as I think both ye now would, If envy or age had not frozen your blood, At the sorrow of my sweet pipings. THE QUESTION. I DREAMED that, as I wandered by the way, Bare winter suddenly was changed to spring, And gentle odours led my steps astray, Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay Its Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling green arms round the bosom of the stream, But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream. There grew pied wind-flowers and violets, Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth, The constellated flower that never sets; Faint oxlips; tender blue bells, at whose birth The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that Its mother's face with heaven-collected tears, [wets When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears. And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine, Green cow-bind and the moonlight-coloured May, And cherry blossoms, and white cups, whose wine Was the bright dew yet drained not by the day; And wild roses, and ivy serpentine, With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray; And flowers azure, black, and streaked with gold, Fairer than any wakened eyes behold. And nearer to the river's trembling edge [white, And floating water-lilies, broad and bright, Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge With moonlight beams of their own watery light; And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen. Methought that of these visionary flowers I made a nosegay, bound in such a way That the same hues, which in their natural bowers Were mingled or opposed, the like array Kept these imprisoned children of the Hours Within my hand,-and then, elate and gay, I hastened to the spot whence I had come, That I might there present it !-Oh! to whom? THE TWO SPIRITS. AN ALLEGORY. FIRST SPIRIT. O THOU, who plumed with strong desire Bright are the regions of the air, SECOND SPIRIT. The deathless stars are bright above: And the moon will smile with gentle light FIRST SPIRIT. But if the whirlwinds of darkness waken The red swift clouds of the hurricane SECOND SPIRIT. I see the light, and I hear the sound; And thou, when the gloom is deep and stark, Some say there is a precipice Where one vast pine is frozen to ruin Some say when nights are dry and clear, LETTER TO MARIA GISBORNE. LEGHORN, July 1, 1820. Whoever should behold me now, I wist, For round the walls are hung dread engines, such Who thought to pay some interest for the debt With fishes found under the utmost crag Of Cornwall, and the storm-encompassed isles, Or heap himself in such a horrid mass And forms of unimaginable wood, To puzzle Tubal Cain and all his brood: Great screws, and cones, and wheels, and grooved blocks, The elements of what will stand the shocks Pledging the demons of the earthquake, who And call out to the cities o'er their head,- quaff Another rouse, and hold their sides and laugh. In colour like the wake of light that stains A hollow screw with cogs-Henry will know A thing from which sweet lips were wont to drink And here like some weird Archimage sit I, I heed him more than them-the thunder-smoke One chasm of heaven smiles, like the eye of love |