The Aurora of the nations. By this brow Whose pores wept tears of blood, by these wide wounds, By this imperial crown of agony, By infamy and solitude and death, for me 90 The unremembered joy of a revenge, Stars of all night-her harmonies and forms, From hollow leagues, from Tyranny which arms Adverse miscreeds and emulous anarchies The solid heart of enterprise; from all She shall arise Their path o'er the abyss, till every sphere SATAN. 120 Be as all things beneath the empyrean, Whose sceptre is a reed, the broken reed scorn; For seest thou not beneath this crystal floor strife 130 Thou Destiny, Thou who art mailed in the omnipotence Of Him who sends thee forth, whate'er thy task, Speed, spare not to accomplish, and be mine To suffer, or a gulph of hollow death Go, thou Vicegerent of my will, no less 140 Than of the Father's; but, lest thou shouldst faint, The winged hounds, Famine and Pestilence, Shall wait on thee, the hundred-forkèd snake, Insatiate Superstition still shall... The earth behind thy steps, and War shall hover Above, and Fraud shall gape below, and Change 150 Shall flit before thee on her dragon wings, Pass triumphing over the thorns of life, Sceptres and crowns, mitres and swords and snares, Trampling in scorn, like Him and Socrates. The first is Anarchy; when Power and Pleasure, Glory and science and security, On Freedom hang like fruit on the green tree, Then pour it forth, and men shall gather ashes. The second Tyranny— CHRIST. Obdurate spirit! Thou seest but the Past in the To-come. 160 Pride is thy error and thy punishment. worlds Are more than furnace-sparks or rainbow-drops Before the Power that wields and kindles them. True greatness asks not space, true excellence Lives in the Spirit of all things that live, Which lends it to the worlds thou callest thine. With beams as keen as those which pierced the shadow 170 Of Christian night rolled back upon the West When the orient moon of Islam rode in triumph From Tmolus to the Acroceraunian snow. * * * Wake, thou Word Of God, and from the throne of Destiny Be thou a curse on them whose creed Divides and multiplies the most high God. FRAGMENTS CONNECTED WITH THE PROLOGUE TO HELLAS. I. FAIREST of the Destinies, Disarray thy dazzling eyes: Keener far thy lightnings are Than the winged [bolts] thou bearest, Wraps thee as a star Is wrapped in light. II. Could Arethuse to her forsaken urn From Alpheus and the bitter Doris run, 180 Or could the morning shafts of purest light Again into the quivers of the Sun 190 Be gathered-could one thought from its wild flight Return into the temple of the brain Without a change, without a stain,- III. A star has fallen upon the earth A quenchless atom of immortal light, A cresset shaken from the constellations. To the heart of Earth, the well And unextinct in that cold source course Guides the sphere which is its prison, Like an angelic spirit pent In a form of mortal birth, Till, as a spirit half arisen Shatters its charnel, it has rent, In the rapture of its mirth, The thin and painted garment of the Earth, 200 210 SONG: "I WOULD NOT BE A KING." I WOULD not be a king-enough Of woe it is to love; The path to power is steep and rough, And tempests reign above. I would not climb the imperial throne; 'Tis built on ice which fortune's sun Thaws in the height of noon, |