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
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!

dare conceal.

XIV.

Time cannot

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 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 portraiture, 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.

our !

O vain endeav

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,

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 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 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;

As summer clouds dissolve unburthened 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 tempest-
uous play.

THE WANING MOON.

AND like a dying lady, lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapt in a gauzy veil
Out of her chamber, led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,
The moon arose upon the murky earth,
A white and shapeless mass.

ARETHUSA.

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 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,

With his trident the mountains strook;
And opened a chasm

In the rocks;-with the spasm

All Erymanthus shook.

And the black south wind

It concealed behind

The urns of the silent snow,

And earthquake and thunder

Did rend in sunder

The bars of the springs below:
The beard and the hair

Of the river God were

Seen through the torrent's sweep,
As he followed the light