Hearts free as his, to realms as pure as thee, Beyond the shot of tyranny, Who owed your first promotion to his Beyond the webs of that swoln spider.. favour, Who grew beneath his smile—— Laud. Would therefore beg| The office of his judge from this High Court, That it shall seem, even as it is, that I, In my assumption of this sacred robe, Have put aside all worldly preference, Beyond the curses, calumnies, and lies Athwart its zones of tempest and of calm, All sense of all distinction of all persons, Like floating Edens cradled in the glimmer Of sunset, through the distant mist of years Touched by departing hope, they gleam! lone regions, Where power's poor dupes and victims yet have never Propitiated the savage fear of kings With purest blood of noblest hearts; whose dew Is yet unstained with tears of those who wake To weep each day the wrongs on which it dawns; Whose sacred silent air owns yet no echo Of formal blasphemies; nor impious rites Wrest man's free worship, from the God who loves, How can I call thee England, or my To the poor worm who envies us his country?— Does the wind hold? Vane. The vanes sit steady Upon the Abbey towers. The silver lightnings Of the evening star, spite of the city's smoke, Tell that the north wind reigns in the upper air. Mark too that flock of fleecy-wingèd Of pale blue atmosphere; whose tears Archy. I'll go live under the ivy that overgrows the terrace, and count the tears shed on its old roots as the [wind] plays the song of "A widow bird sate mourning Heigho! the lark and the owl! One flies the morning, and one lulls the night :-- Only the nightingale, poor fond soul, Sings like the fool through darkness and light. "A widow bird sate mourning for her love Upon a wintry bough; Took as his own, and then imposed on Thick strewn with summer dust, and a them: great stream But I, whom thoughts which must re- Of people there was hurrying to and bier; Was at my feet, and Heaven above my Old age and youth, manhood and in head, When a strange trance over my fancy grew fancy Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear, Which was not slumber, for the shade Some flying from the thing they feared, it spread and some Seeking the object of another's fear; And others as with steps towards the tomb, Pored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath, And others mournfully within the gloom Of their own shadow walked and called it death; And sate as thus upon that slope of And some fled from it as it were a lawn ghost, Under the self-same bough, and heard Half fainting in the affliction of vain as there The birds, the fountains and the ocean hold Sweet talk in music through the en amoured air, breath: But more, with motions which each other crost, Pursued or shunned the shadows the clouds threw, And then a vision on my brain was Or birds within the noonday ether lost, rolled. As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay, This was the tenour of my waking dream: Methought I sate beside a public way Upon that path where flowers never grew, And, weary with vain toil and faint for thirst, Heard not the fountains, whose melodious dew By action or by suffering, and whose Throw back their heads and loose their streaming hair; hour Was drained to its last sand in weal or And in their dance round her who dims Their spirits to the conquerors-but as soon the sun, Maidens and youths fling their wild arms in air As their feet twinkle; they recede, and now Bending within each other's atmosphere, Kindle invisibly—and as they glow, go, As they had touched the world with Till like two clouds into one vale im living flame, Fled back like eagles to their native noon, Or those who put aside the diadem Were there, of Athens or Jerusalem, seen, Nor 'mid the ribald crowd that followed them, pelled, That shake the mountains when their lightnings mingle And die in rain-the fiery band which held Their natures, snaps-while the shock One falls and then another in the path Yet ere I can say where-the chariot Nor those who went before fierce and Past over them-nor other trace I find obscene. The wild dance maddens in the van, and those But as of foam after the ocean's wrath Is spent upon the desert shore ;-behind, Who lead it-fleet as shadows on the Old men and women foully disarrayed, green, Outspeed the chariot, and without repose Shake their gray hairs in the insulting wind, Mix with each other in tempestuous And follow in the dance, with limbs |