(If Hope, and Truth, and Justice can avail) Art thou of all these hopes.-Oh hail! STROPHE IV. d. Florence, beneath the sun, Of cities fairest one, Blushes within her bower for freedom's expectation : From eyes of quenchless hope Rome tears the priestly cope, As ruling once by power, so now by admiration- From a remoter station For the high prize lost on Philippi's shore- EPODE I. b. Hear ye the march as of the Earth-born Forms, Of crags and thunder-clouds? See ye the banners blazoned to the day, The serene heaven which wraps our Eden wide The Anarchs of the North lead forth their legions, Au hundred tribes nourished on strange religions And lawless slaveries. Down the aerial regions Of the white Alps, desolating, Famished wolves that bide no waiting, Blotting the glowing footsteps of old glory, Trampling our columned cities into dust, 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. C. Great Spirit, deepest love, Which rulest and dost move All things which live and are within the Italian shore; Who spreadest heaven around it, Whose woods, rocks, waves, surround it; Who sittest in thy star, o'er ocean's western floor! Spirit of Beauty, at whose soft command The sunbeams and the showers distil its foison Oh bid those beams be each a blinding brand Bid thy bright heaven above, Whilst light and darkness bound it, To make it ours and thine! Or with thine harmonising ardours fill And raise thy sons, as o'er the prone horizon Thy lamp feeds every twilight wave with fire! Be man's high hope and unextinct desire The instrument to work thy will divine! Then clouds from sunbeams, antelopes from And frowns and fears from thee, Than Celtic wolves from the Ausonian shepherds. R Whatever, Spirit, from thy starry shrine SUMMER AND WINTER. T was a bright and cheerful afternoon, Towards the end of the sunny month of June, When the north wind congregates in crowds The floating mountains of the silvery clouds From the horizon, and the stainless sky Opens beyond them like eternity. All things rejoiced beneath the sun-the weeds, The river, and the cornfields, and the reeds, The willow leaves that glanced in the light breeze, And the firm foliage of the larger trees. It was a Winter such as when birds die LINES TO A REVIEWER. see In hating such a hateless thing as me? In winter noon. Of your antipathy TH AUTUMN. A DIRGE. HE warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing, The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying, And the Year On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead, Is lying. Come, Months, come away, From November to May, In your saddest array; Of the dead cold Year, And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre. The chill rain is falling, the nipped worm is crawling, The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling For the Year; The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone To his dwelling. Come, Months, come away; Put on white, black, and grey; Let your light sisters play- Of the dead cold Year, And make her grave green with tear on tear. The tempestuous oceans awake one another, And the ice-rocks are shaken round Winter's throne, When the clarion of the Typhoon is blown. 2. From a single cloud the lightning flashes, Whilst a thousand isles are illumined around; Earthquake is trampling one city to ashes, [sound An hundred are shuddering and tottering the Is bellowing underground. 3. But keener thy gaze than the lightning's glare, And swifter thy step than the earthquake's tramp; |