And every Naiad's ice-cold urn,
To talk in echoes sad and stern,

Of that sublimest lore which man had dared un

learn?

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 then the shadow of thy coming fell On Saxon Alfred's olive-cinctured brow: And many a warrior-peopled citadel, Like rocks, which fire lifts out of the flat deep, Arose in sacred Italy,

Frowning o'er the tempestuous sea

Of kings, and priests, and slaves, in tower-crowned majesty ;

That multitudinous anarchy did sweep

And burst around their walls like idle foam, Whilst from the human spirit's deepest deep, Strange melody with love and awe struck

dumb

Dissonant arms; and Art which cannot die, With divine want traced on our earthly home Fit imagery to pave heaven's everlasting dome.

X.

Thou huntress swifter than the Moon! thou terror Of the world's wolves! thou bearer of the

quiver,

Whose sun-like shafts pierce tempest-winged Error,

As light may pierce the clouds when they dis

sever

In the calm regions of the orient day!

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; And England's prophets hailed thee as their

queen,

In songs whose music cannot pass away, Though it must flow for ever: not unseen Before the spirit-sighted countenance

Of Milton didst thou pass, from the sad scene Beyond whose night he saw, with a dejected mien.

XI.

The eager hours and unreluctant years

As on a dawn-illumined mountain stood, Trampling to silence their loud hopes and fears, Darkening each other with their multitude,

And cried aloud, Liberty! Indignation
Answered Pity from her cave;

Death grew pale within the grave,

And Desolation howled to the destroyer, Save! When, like heaven's sun, girt by the exhalation Of its own glorious light, thou didst arise, Chasing thy foes from nation unto nation

Like shadows: as if day had cloven the skies

At dreaming midnight o'er the western wave, Men started, staggering with a glad surprise, Under the lightnings of thine unfamiliar eyes.

XII.

Thon heaven of earth! what spells could pall thee then,

In ominous eclipse? A thousand years, Bred from the slime of deep oppression's den,

Dyed all thy liquid light with blood and tears, Till thy sweet stars could weep the stain away: How like Bacchanals of blood

Round France, the ghastly vintage, stood Destruction's sceptred slaves, and Folly's mitred

brood!

When one, like them, but mightier far than

they,

The Anarch of thine own bewildered powers,

Rose armies mingled in obscure array

Like clouds with clouds, darkening the sa

cred bowers

Of serene heaven. He, by the past pursued, Rests with those dead but unforgotten hours, Whose ghosts scare victor kings in their ancestral towers.

XIII.

England yet sleeps: was she not called of old? Spain calls her now, as with its thrilling thunder Vesuvius wakens Etna, and the cold

Snow-crags by its reply are cloven in sunder: O'er the lit waves every Æolian isle

From Pithecusa to Pelorus

Howls, and leaps, and glares in chorus: They cry, Be dim, ye lamps of heaven suspended

o'er us.

Her chains are threads of gold, she need but smile And they dissolve; but Spain's were links Till bit to dust by virtue's keenest file. [of steel, Twins of a single destiny! appeal

To the eternal years enthroned before us,

In the dim West; impress us from a seal, All ye have thought and done! Time cannot dare conceal.

XIV.

Tomb of Arminius! render up thy dead

Till, like a standard from a watch-tower's staff, His soul may stream over the tyrant's head! Thy victory shall be his epitaph,

Wild Bacchanal of truth's mysterious wine.
King-deluded Germany,

His dead spirit lives in thee.

Why do we fear or hope? thou art already free And thou, lost Paradise of this divine

And glorious world! thou flowery wilderness Thou island of eternity! thou shrine

Where desolation, clothed with loveliness, Worships the thing thou wert! O Italy, Gather thy blood into thy heart; repress The beasts who make their dens thy sacred palaces.

XV.

O that the free would stamp the impious name Of * into the dust; or write it there,

So that this blot upon the page of fame

Were as a serpent's path, which the light air Erases, and the flat sands close behind! Ye the oracle have heard:

Lift the victory-flashing sword,

And cut the snaky knots of this foul gordian
word,

Which, weak itself as stubble, yet can bind
Into a mass, irrefragably firm,

The axes and the rods which awe mankind;

The sound has poison in it, 'tis the sperm Of what makes life foul, cankerous, and abhorred; Disdain not thou, at thine appointed term, To set thine armèd heel on this reluctant worm