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 wand 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 sunlike shafts pierce tempest-wingèd Error, As light may pierce the clouds when they dissever 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 qucen, 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.

"Thou 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 sacred 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 Ætna, 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 of steel,
Till bit to dust by virtue's keenest file.

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.

"Oh that the free would stamp the impious name Of 'King' 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.

XVI.

"Oh that the wise from their bright minds would kindle Such lamps within the dome of this dim world

That the pale name of Priest might shrink and dwindle
Into the hell from which it first was hurled,

A scoff of impious pride from fiends impure!
Till human thoughts might kneel alone,
Each before the judgment-throne

Of its own aweless soul, or of the Power unknown.

Oh that the words which make the thoughts obscure From which they spring, as clouds of glimmering dew · From a white lake blot heaven's blue portraiture,

Were stripped of their thin masks and various hue, And frowns and smiles and splendours not their own, Till in the nakedness of false and true

They stand before their lord, each to receive its due !

XVII.

"He who taught man to vanquish whatsoever
Can be between the cradle and the grave
Crowned him the King of Life. Oh vain endeavour,
If on his own high will, a willing slave,

He has enthroned the oppression and the oppressor !
What if earth can clothe and feed

Amplest millions at their need,

And power in thought be as the tree within the seed,-
Or what if Art, an ardent intercessor,

Driving on fiery wings to Nature's throne,
Checks the great Mother stooping to caress her,
And cries, 'Give me, thy child, dominion

Over all height and depth '—if Life can breed

New wants, and Wealth, from those who toil and groan,

Rend, of thy gifts and hers, a thousandfold for one?

XVIII.

"Come Thou! But lead out of the inmost cave

Of man's deep spirit-as the morning star

Beckons the Sun from the Eoan wave-
Wisdom. I hear the pennons of her car,
Self-moving, like clouds charioted by flame!
Comes she not? And come ye not,
Rulers of eternal thought,

To judge with solemn truth Life's ill-apportioned lot,—
Blind Love, and equal Justice, and the Fame

Of what has been, the Hope of what will be?

O Liberty-(if such could be thy name

Wert thou disjoined from these, or they from thee)—— If thine or theirs were treasures to be bought

By blood or tears, have not the wise and free

Wept tears, and blood like tears?"-The solemn harmony

XIX.

Paused, and the Spirit of that mighty singing
To its abyss was suddenly withdrawn.
Then, as a wild swan, when sublimely winging
Its path athwart the thunder-smoke of dawn,
Sinks headlong through the aërial golden light
On the heavy-sounding plain,

When the bolt has pierced its brain;

As summer clouds dissolve unburdened of their rain; As a far taper fades with fading night;

As a brief insect dies with dying day; My song, its pinions disarrayed of might,

Drooped. O'er it closed the echoes far away Of the great voice which did its flight sustain,— As waves which lately paved his watery way Hiss round a drowner's head in their tempestuous play.

ARETHUSA.

I.

ARETHUSA arose

From her couch of snows

In the Acroceraunian mountains,→

From cloud and from crag,

With many a jag,

Shepherding her bright fountains.

She leapt down the rocks,

With her rainbow locks

Streaming among the streams;

Her steps paved with green
The downward ravine

Which slopes to the western gleam
And gliding and springing,
She went, ever singing

In murmurs as soft as sleep.

The Earth seemed to love her,
And Heaven smiled above her,

As she lingered towards the deep.