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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 this I underwent, and by the pain
Of pity for those who would

for me

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The unremembered joy of a revenge,
For this I felt by Plato's sacred light,
Of which my spirit was a burning morrow-
By Greece and all she cannot cease to be,
Her quenchless words, sparks of immortal
truth,

Stars of all night-her harmonies and forms,
Echoes and shadows of what Love adores
In thee, I do compel thee, send forth Fate, 100
Thy irrevocable child: let her descend
A seraph-winged victory [arrayed]
In tempest of the omnipotence of God
Which sweeps through all things.

From hollow leagues, from Tyranny which

arms

Adverse miscreeds and emulous anarchies
To stamp, as on a wingèd serpent's seed,
Upon the name of Freedom; from the storm
Of faction, which like earthquake shakes and
sickens

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The solid heart of enterprise; from all
By which the holiest dreams of highest spirits
Are stars beneath the dawn...

She shall arise
Victorious as the world arose from Chaos!
And as the Heavens and the Earth arrayed
Their presence in the beauty and the light
Of thy first smile, O Father, as they gather
The spirit of thy love which paves for them

Their path o'er the abyss, till every sphere
Shall be one living Spirit, so shall Greece-

SATAN.

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Be as all things beneath the empyrean,
Mine! Art thou eyeless like old Destiny,
Thou mockery-king, crowned with a wreath of
thorns?

Whose sceptre is a reed, the broken reed
Which pierces thee! whose throne a chair of

scorn;

For seest thou not beneath this crystal floor
The innumerable worlds of golden light
Which are my empire, and the least of them
which thou wouldst redeem from me?
Know'st thou not them my portion?
Or wouldst rekindle the
Which our great Father then did arbitrate
When he assigned to his competing sons
Each his apportioned realm ?

strife

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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
Thy trophies, whether Greece again become
The fountain in the desert whence the earth
Shall drink of freedom, which shall give it
strength

To suffer, or a gulph of hollow death
To swallow all delight, all life, all hope.

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,
Convulsing and consuming; and I add
Three vials of the tears which dæmons weep
When virtuous spirits through the gate of
Death

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.
Boast not thine empire, dream not that thy

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.

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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.

*

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Wake, thou Word

Of God, and from the throne of Destiny
Even to the utmost limit of thy way
May Triumph

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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,
And the smile thou wearest

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

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Be gathered-could one thought from its

wild flight

Return into the temple of the brain

Without a change, without a stain,-
Could aught that is, ever again
Be what it once has ceased to be,
Greece might again be free!

III.

A star has fallen upon the earth
'Mid the benighted nations,

A quenchless atom of immortal light,
A living spark of Night,

A cresset shaken from the constellations.
Swifter than the thunder fell

To the heart of Earth, the well
Where its pulses flow and beat,

And unextinct in that cold source
Burns, and on

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,
Ruining its chaos-a fierce breath
Consuming all its forms of living death.

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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,

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