ODE TO LIBERTY. Yet freedom, yet, thy banner torn but flying, BYRON. I. A GLORIOUS people vibrated again The lightning of the nations: Liberty, As a young eagle soars the morning clouds among, As foam from a ship's swiftness, when there came II. The Sun and the serenest Moon sprang forth; The burning stars of the abyss were hurl'd Was yet a chaos and a curse, For thou wert not: but power from worst producing worse, The spirit of the beasts was kindled there, And of the birds, and of the watery forms, And there was war among them and despair Within them, raging without truce or terms: The bosom of their violated nurse Groaned, for beasts warred on beasts, and worms on worms, And men on men; each heart was as a hell of storms. III. Man, the imperial shape, then multiplied His generations under the pavilion Temple and prison, to many a swarming million, Was savage, cunning, blind, and rude, Into the shadow of her pinions wide, Anarchs and priests who feed on gold and blood, IV. The nodding promontories, and blue isles, And cloud-like mountains, and dividuous waves On the unapprehensive wild. The vine, the corn, the olive mild, Grew, savage yet, to human use unreconciled; And like unfolded flowers beneath the sea, Like the man's thought dark in the infant's brain, Like aught that is which wraps what is to be, Art's deathless dreams lay veiled by many a vein Of Parian stone; and yet a speechless child, Verse murmured, and Philosophy did strain Her lidless eyes for thee; when o'er the Ægean main Athens arose a city such as vision Builds from the purple crags and silver towers By thunder-zoned winds, each head Gleamed with its crest of columns, on the will Of man, as on a mount of diamond, set; For thou wert, and thine all-creative skill Peopled, with forms that mock the eternal dead In marble immortality, that hill Which was thine earliest throne and latest oracle. VI. Within the surface of Time's fleeting river It trembles, but it cannot pass away! Through the caverns of the past; Religion veils her eyes; Oppression shrinks aghast : Which soars where Expectation never flew, Rending the veil of space and time asunder! One ocean feeds the clouds, and streams, and dew; One sun illumines heaven; one spirit vast With life and love makes chaos ever new, As Athens doth the world with thy delight renew. VII. Then Rome was, and from thy deep bosom fairest, And in thy smile, and by thy side, But when tears stained thy robe of vestal whiteness, Slaves of one tyrant. Palatinus sighed Faint echoes of Ionian song; that tone VIII. From what Hyrcanian glen or frozen hill, Didst thou lament the ruin of thy reign, To talk in echoes sad and stern, Of that sublimest lore which man had dared unlearn? * See the Bacchæ of Euripides. For neither didst thou watch the wizard flocks Of the Scald's dreams, nor haunt the Druid's sleep. What if the tears rained through thy shattered locks, Were quickly dried? for thou didst groan, not weep, When from its sea of death to kill and burn, The Galilean serpent forth did creep, And made thy world an undistinguishable heap. IX. A thousand years the Earth cried, Where art thou? And many a warrior-peopled citadel, Frowning o'er the tempestuous sea Of kings, and priests, and slaves, in tower-crowned majesty ; And burst around their walls, like idle foam, X. Thou huntress swifter than the Moon! thou terror Luther caught thy wakening glance: Like lightning from his leaden lance Reflected, it dissolved the visions of the trance In which, as in a tomb, the nations lay; |