With iron light is dyed, The Anarchs of the North lead forth their legions An hundred tribes nourished on strange religions Famished wolves that bide no waiting, Blotting the glowing footsteps of old glory, On Beauty's corse to sickness satiating They come! The fields they tread look black and hoary With fire--from their red feet the streams run gory! EPODE II. B. Great Spirit, deepest Love! All things which live and are within the Italian shore; Whose woods, rocks, waves, surround it; Who sittest in thy star, o'er Ocean's western floor, The sunbeams and the showers distil its foison O bid those beams be each a blinding brand Bid thy bright Heaven above, Whilst light and darkness bound it, Be their tomb who planned To make it ours and thine ! Or, with thine harmonizing ardours fill Thy lamp feeds every twilight wave with fire- Then clouds from sunbeams, antelopes from leopards, Than Celtic wolves from the Ausonian shepherds.— September, 1820. MARIANNE'S DREAM. A PALE dream came to a Lady fair, And things are lost in the glare of day, And thou shalt know of things unknown, The veiny lids, whose fringe is thrown At first all deadly shapes were driven And o'er the vast cope of bending heaven And as towards the east she turned, The sky was blue as the summer sea, There was no sight nor sound of dread, The Lady grew sick with a weight of fear, The sound as of a dim low clanging, Of the blood in her own veins, to and fro. There was a mist in the sunless air, Which shook as it were with an earthquake's shock, But the very weeds that blossomed there Were moveless, and each mighty rock Stood on its basis stedfastly; The Anchor was seen no more on high. But piled around, with summits hid Through the red mist their domes whose quiver. On two dread mountains, from whose crest, Those tower-encircled cities stood. And columns framed of marble white, Shot o'er the vales, or lustre lent But still the Lady heard that clang Sudden from out that city sprung A light that made the earth grow red; Two flames that each with quivering tongue Licked its bigh domes, and over head Among those mighty towers and fanes Its sulphurous ruin on the plains. And hark! a rush, as if the deep Had burst its bonds; she looked behind, A raging flood descend, and wind And now those raging billows came The waves were fiercely vomited From every tower and every dome, And dreary light did widely shed O'er that vast flood's suspended foam, Beneath the smoke which hung its night On the stained cope of heaven's light. The plank whereon that Lady sate Was driven through the chasms, about and about, Between the peaks so desolate Of the drowning mountain, in and out, As the thistle-beard on a whirlwind sails While the flood was filling those hollow vales. |