Gleamed. My soul spurned the chains of its dismay
And, in the rapid plumes of song,
Clothed itself sublime and strong;
As a young eagle soars the morning clouds among,
Hovering in verse o'er its accustomed prey;

Till from its station in the heaven of fame
The Spirit's whirlwind rapt it, and the ray
Of the remotest sphere of living flame
Which paves the void, was from behind it flung,
As foam from a ship's swiftness, when there came
A voice out of the deep; I will record the same.

Man, the imperial shape, then multiplied
His generations under the pavilion

Of the sun's throne: palace and pyramid,
Temple and prison, to many a swarming million,
Were, as to mountain-wolves their ragged caves.
This human living multitude

Was savage, cunning, blind and rude, For thou wert not; but o'er the populous solitude, Like one fierce cloud over a waste of waves,

Hung tyranny; beneath, sate deified The sister-pest, congregator of slaves;

Into the shadow of her pinions wide, Anarchs and priests who feed on gold and blood, Till with the stain their inmost souls are dyed, Drove the astonished herds of men from every side.

IV.

The nodding promontories, and blue isles,

And cloud-like mountains, and dividuous waves Of Greece, basked glorious in the open smiles Of favouring heaven; from their enchanted caves Prophetic echoes flung dim melody

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 Egean

main

Athens arose; a city such as vision
Builds from the purple crags and silver towers
Of battlemented cloud, as in dirision
Of kingliest masonry: the ocean floors
Pave it; the evening sky pavilions it;
Its portals are inhabited

By thunder-zoned winds, each head Within its cloudy wings with sun-fire garlanded, A divine work! Athens diviner yet

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
Its wrinkled image lies, as then it lay
Immovably unquiet, and for ever

It trembles, but it cannot pass away!
The voices of thy bards and sages thunder
With an earth-awakening blast
Through the caverns of the past;
Religion veils her eyes; Oppression shrinks aghast:
A winged sound of joy, and love, and wonder,
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 delights renew.

VII.

Then Rome was, and from thy deep bosom fairest,
Like a wolf-cub from Cadmæan Mænad,*
She drew the milk of greatness, though thy dearest
From that Elysian food was yet unweaned;
And many a deed of terrible uprightness

By thy sweet love was sanctified;
And in thy smile, and by thy side,

Saintly Camillus lived, and firm Atilius died.

But when tears stained thy robe of vestal white

ness,

And gold profaned thy capitolian throne, Thou didst desert, with spirit-winged lightness, The senate of the tyrants: they sunk prone

Slaves of one tyrant. Palatinus sighed

Faint echoes of Ionian song; that tone
Thou didst delay to hear, lamenting to disown.

VIII.

From what Hyrcanian glen or frozen hill,
Or piny promontory of the Arctic main,
Or utmost islet inaccessible,

Didst thou lament the ruin of thy reign,
Teaching the woods and waves, and desert rocks,
And every Naiad's ice-cold urn,
To talk in echoes sad and stern,

Of that sublimest lore which man had dared unlearn?

See the Bacche of Euripides.

For neither didst thou watch the wizard flocks Of the Scald's dreams, nor haunt the Druid's sleep. [locks, What if the tears rained through thy shattered Were quickly dried? for thou didst groan, not When from its sea of death to kill and burn [weep, 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,

Strage 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 sunlike shafts pierce tempest-winged 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 In songs whose music cannot pass away, [queen, 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 In ominous eclipse? A thousand years, [then, 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 Of serene heaven. He, by the past pursued, [bowers Rests with those dead but unforgotten hours, Whose ghosts scare victor kings in their ances

tral 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: [us. They cry, Be dim, ye lamps of heaven suspended o'er Her chains are threads of gold, she need but smile And they dissolve; but Spain's were links of Till bit to dust, by virtue's keenest file. Twins of a single destiny! appeal

[steel,

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
**** into the dust; or write it there,
Of **
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 armed heel on this reluctant worm.

XVI.

O 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! O 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 po

Were stript 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. O 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
Or what if Art, an ardent intercessor, [seed?
Diving 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 thousand fold 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 pennors of her car
Self-moving like cloud 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 aerial golden light
On the heavy sounding plain,
When the bolt has pierced its brain;

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 gleams:
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.

Then Alpheus bold,

On his glacier cold,

Like a gloomy stain
On the emerald main
Alpheus rushed behind,—

As an eagle pursuing
A dove to its ruin

Down the streams of the cloudy wind.

Under the bowers

Where the Ocean Powers Sit on their pearled thrones:

Through the coral woods Of the weltering floods, Over heaps of unvalued stones;

Through the dim beams

Which amid the streams

Weave a network of coloured light; And under the caves,

Where the shadowy waves

Are as green as the forest's night :Outspeeding the shark,

And the sword-fish dark,

Under the ocean foam,

And up through the rifts
Of the mountain clifts

They passed to their Dorian home.

And now from their fountains
In Enna's mountains,

Down one vale where the morning basks,
Like friends once parted
Grown single-hearted,

They ply their watery tasks.
At sunrise they leap
From their cradles steep
In the cave of the shelving hill;
At noontide thy flow
Through the woods below
And the meadows of Asphodel;
And at night they sleep
In the rocking deep

Beneath the Ortygian shore;

Like spirits that lie

In the azure sky

When they love but live no more.

PISA, 1820.

SONG OF PROSERPINE,

WHILE GATHERING FLOWERS ON THE PLAIN OF ENNA.

SACRED Goddess, Mother earth,

Thou from whose immortal bosom, Gods, and men, and beasts have birth, Leaf and blade, and bud and blossom, Breathe thine influence most divine On thine own child, Proserpine.

If with mists of evening dew

Thou dost nourish these young flowers
Till they grow, in scent and hue,
Fairest children of the hours,

Breathe thine influence most divine
On thine own child, Proserpine.

HYMN OF APOLLO.

THE sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie,
Curtained with star-inwoven tapestries,
From the broad moonlight of the sky,

Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes,Waken me when their Mother, the gray Dawn, Tells them that dreams and that the moon is gone.

Then I arise, and climbing Heaven's blue dome, I walk over the mountains and the waves, Leaving my robe upon the ocean foam;

My footsteps pave the clouds with fire: the caves Are filled with my bright presence, and the air Leaves the green earth to my embraces bare.

The sunbeams are my shafts, with which I kill
Deceit, that loves the night and fears the day;
All men who do or even imagine ill

Fly me, and from the glory of my ray
Good minds and open actions take new might,
Until diminished by the reign of night.

I feed the clouds, the rainbows, and the flowers,
With their ethereal colours; the Moon's globe
And the pure stars in their eternal bowers

Are cinctured with my power as with a robe; Whatever lamps on Earth or Heaven may shine Are portions of one power, which is mine.

I stand at noon upon the peak of Heaven,
Then with unwilling steps I wander down
Into the clouds of the Atlantic even;

For grief that I depart they weep and frown: What look is more delightful than the smile With which I soothe them from the western isle?

I am the eye with which the Universe

Beholds itself and knows itself divine; All harmony of instrument or verse,

All prophecy, all medicine are mine, All light of art or nature;-to my song Victory and praise in their own right belong.

HYMN OF PAN.

FROM the forests and highlands

We come, we come;

From the river-girt islands,

Where loud waves are dumb

Listening to my sweet pipings.

The wind in the reeds and the rushes,
The bees on the bells of thyme,

The birds on the myrtle bushes,

The cicale above in the lime, And the lizards below in the grass, Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was, Listening to my sweet pipings.

This and the former poem were written at the request of a friend, to be inserted in a drama on the subject of Midas. Apollo and Pan contended before Tmolus for the prize in music.

Liquid Peneus was flowing,
And all dark Tempe lay
In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing
The light of the dying day,

Speeded with my sweet pipings. The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns, And the nymphs of the woods and waves, To the edge of the moist river-lawns,

And the brink of the dewy caves, And all that did then attend and follow, Were silent with love, as you now, Apollo, With envy of my sweet pipings.

I sang of the dancing stars,

I sang of the dædal Earth,
And of Heaven-and the giant wars,
And Love, and Death, and Birth,-

And then I changed my pipings,—
Singing how down the vale of Menalus
I pursued a maiden and clasped a reed:
Gods and men, we are all deluded thus!

It breaks in our bosom and then we bleed:
All wept, as I think both ye now would,
If envy or age had not frozen your blood,
At the sorrow of my sweet pipings.

THE QUESTION.

I DREAMED that as I wandered by the way, Bare winter suddenly was changed to spring, And gentle odours led my steps astray,

Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling Its green arms round the bosom of the stream, But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream. There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,

Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth, The constellated flower that never sets;

Faint oxlips; tender blue bells, at whose birth The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that Its mother's face with heaven-collected tears, [wets When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears. And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,

Green cow-bind and the moonlight-coloured May, And cherry blossoms, and white cups, whose wine Was the bright dew yet drained not by the day; And wild roses, and ivy serpentine,

With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray; And flowers azure, black, and streaked with gold, Fairer than any wakened eyes behold. And nearer to the river's trembling edge There grew broad flag-flowers, purple prankt with And starry river buds among the sedge,

[white,

And floating water-lilies, broad and bright, Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge With moonlight beams of their own watery light; And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen. Methought that of these visionary flowers I made a nosegay, bound in such a way That the same hues, which in their natural bowers Were mingled or opposed, the like array