STROPHE III. Y. Didst thou not start to hear Spain's thrilling pæan From land to land re-echoed solemnly, Till silence became music? From the Æxan To the cold Alps, eternal Italy Starts to hear thine! The sea Which paves the desert streets of Venice laughs The viper's palsying venom, lifts her heel 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,— An athlete stripped to run From a remoter station For the high prize lost on Philippi's shore :— EPODE I. a. Oh hail! Hear ye the march as of the Earth-born Forms Of crags and thunder-clouds? See ye the banners blazoned to the day, Inwrought with emblems of barbaric pride? The serene heaven which wraps our Eden wide The Anarchs of the North lead forth their legions, An hundred tribes nourished on strange religions And lawless slaveries. Down the aërial regions Famished wolves that bide no waiting, On Beauty's corse to sickness satiating They come ! The fields they tread look black and hoary EPODE II. B. Great Spirit, deepest Love, Which rulest and dost move All things which live and are within the Italian shore; Whose woods, rocks, waves, surround it; Who sittest in thy star, o'er ocean's western floor !— The sunbeams and the showers distil its foison Oh bid those beams be each a blinding brand Of lightning! bid those showers be dews of poison! Bid thy bright heaven above, Whilst light and darkness bound it, To make it ours and thine! Or with thine harmonizing ardours fill And raise thy sons, as o'er the prone horizon The instrument to work thy will divine! Then clouds from sunbeams, antelopes from leopards, Would not more swifty flee Than Celtic wolves from the Ausonian shepherds. Whatever, Spirit, from thy starry shrine Thou yieldest or withholdest, oh let be 25 August 1820. VOL. II. SUMMER AND WINTER. It was a bright and cheerful afternoon, All things rejoiced beneath the sun,-the weeds, It was a Winter such as when birds die LINES TO A REVIEWER. ALAS! good friend, what profit can you see In which not even contempt lurks, to beguile R AUTUMN. A DIRGE. THE warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing, 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 ; Follow the bier Of the dead cold Year, And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre. The chill rain is falling, the nipped worm is crawling, 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— Ye, follow the bier Of the dead cold Year, And make her grave green with tear on tear. LIBERTY. I. THE fiery mountains answer each other, Their thunderings are echoed from zone to zone; The tempestuous oceans awake one another, And the ice-rocks are shaken round Winter's throne, II. From a single cloud the lightning flashes, Whilst a thousand isles are illumined around; Earthquake is trampling one city to ashes, An hundred are shuddering and tottering,—the sound III. But keener thy gaze than the lightning's glare, IV. From billow and mountain and exhalation The sunlight is darted through vapour and blast; From city to hamlet, thy dawning is cast,- THE TOWER OF FAMINE. AMID the desolation of a city Which was the cradle and is now the grave Weeps o'er the shipwrecks of oblivion's wave, Until its vital oil is spent or spilt. There stands the pile, a tower amid the towers And sacred domes, each marble-ribbed roof, The brazen-gated temples, and the bowers Of solitary wealth. The tempest-proof Pavilions of the dark Italian air Are by its presence dimmed-they stand aloof, And are withdrawn-so that the world is bare : As if a spectre, wrapped in shapeless terror, Should glide and glow, till it became a mirror Of all their beauty, -and their hair and hue, The life of their sweet eyes with all its error, Should be absorbed till they to marble grew. |