Nobles, and sons of nobles, patentees, Monopolists, and stewards of this poor farm, On whose lean sheep sit the prophetic crows. Here is the pomp that strips the houseless orphan, Here is the pride that breaks the desolate heart. These are the lilies glorious as Solomon, Who toil not, neither do they spin,-unless It be the webs they catch poor rogues withal. Here is the surfeit which to them who earn The niggard wages of the earth, scarce leaves The tithe that will support them till they crawl Back to its cold hard bosom. Here is health Followed by grim disease, glory by shame, Waste by lank famine, wealth by squalid want, And England's sin by England's punishment. And, as the effect pursues the cause foregone, Lo, giving substance to my words, behold
And, gentlemen, Call your poor Queen your debtor. Your quaint pageant
Rose on me like the figures of past years, Treading their still path back to infancy, More beautiful and mild as they draw nearer The quiet cradle. I could have almost wept To think I was in Paris, where these shows Are well devised-such as I was ere yet My young heart shared with [
The careful weight of this great monarchy. There, gentlemen, between the sovereign's pleasure And that which it regards, no clamour lifts Its proud interposition.
I crave permission of your Majesty To order that this insolent fellow be Chastised: he mocks the sacred character, Scoffs at the stake, and—
What, my Archy! He mocks and mimics all he sees and hears, Yet with a quaint and graceful licence-Prithee For this once do not as Prynne would, were he Primate of England.
He lives in his own world; and, like a parrot, Hung in his gilded prison from the window
Do thou persist: for, faint but in resolve, And it were better thou hadst still remained The slave of thine own slaves, who tear like curs The fugitive, and flee from the pursuer ; And Opportunity, that empty wolf,
Flies at his throat who falls. Subdue thy actions, Even to the disposition of thy purpose, And be that tempered as the Ebro's steel; And banish weak-eyed Mercy to the weak, Whence she will greet thee with a gift of peace, And not betray thee with a traitor's kiss, As when she keeps the company of rebels, Who think that she is fear. This do, lest we Should fall as from a glorious pinnacle
In a bright dream, and wake as from a dream Out of our worshipped state.
And if this suffice not, Unleash the sword and fire, that in their thirst They may lick up that scum of schismatics. I laugh at those weak rebels who, desiring What we possess, still prate of christian peace, As if those dreadful messengers of wrath, Which play the part of God 'twixt right and wrong, Should be let loose against innocent sleep Of templed cities and the smiling fields, For some poor argument of policy Which touches our own profit or our pride, Where indeed it were christian charity
To turn the cheek even to the smiter's hand : And when our great Redeemer, when our God Is scorned in his immediate ministers,
Your brain is overwrought with these deep thoughts.
Come, I will sing to you; let us go try These airs from Italy, and you shall see A cradled miniature of yourself asleep, Stamped on the heart by never-erring love; Liker than any Vandyke ever made,
A pattern to the unborn age of thee, Over whose sweet beauty I have wept for joy A thousand times, and now should weep for sorrow, Did I not think that after we were dead Our fortunes would spring high in him, and that The cares we waste upon our heavy crown Would make it light and glorious as a wreath Of heaven's beams for his dear innocent trow.
This glorious clime, this firmament, whose lights Dart mitigated influence through the veil Of pale-blue atmosphere; whose tears keep green The pavement of this moist all-feeding earth; This vaporous horizon, whose dim round Is bastioned by the circumfluous sea, Repelling invasion from the sacred towers; Presses upon me like a dungeon's grate, A low dark roof, a damp and narrow vault: The mighty universe becomes a cell Too narrow for the soul that owns no master. While the loathliest spot
Of this wide prison, England, is a nest Of cradled peace built on the mountain tops, To which the eagle-spirits of the free, Which range through heaven and earth, and scorn
Of time, and gaze upon the light of truth, Return to brood over the [
] thoughts That cannot die, and may not be repelled.
SWIFT as a spirit hastening to his task Of glory and of good, the Sun sprang forth Rejoicing in his splendour, and the mask
Of darkness fell from the awakened EarthThe smokeless altars of the mountain snows Flamed above crimson clouds, and at the birth
Of light, the Ocean's orison arose,
To which the birds tempered their matin lay. All flowers in field or forest which unclose
Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day, Swinging their censers in the element, With orient incense lit by the new ray
Burned slow and inconsumably, and sent Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air; And, in succession due, did continent,
Isle, ocean, and all things that in them wear The form and character of mortal mould, Rise as the sun their father rose, to bear
Their portion of the toil, which he of old Took as his own and then imposed on them: But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold
Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem The cone of night, now they were laid asleep Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stem
Which an old chesnut flung athwart the steep Of a green Apennine: before me fled The night; behind me rose the day; the deep
Was at my feet, and Heaven above my head, When a strange trance over my fancy grew Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread
Was so transparent that the scene came through As clear as, when a veil of light is drawn O'er evening hills, they glimmer; and I knew That I had felt the freshness of that dawn Bathe in the same cold dew my brow and hair, And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn
Under the self-same bough, and heard as there The birds, the fountains, and the ocean hold Sweet talk in music through the enamoured air, And then a vision on my brain was rolled.
As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay, This was the tenour of my waking dream :— Methought I sate beside a public way
Thick strewn with summer dust, and a great stream Of people there was hurrying to and fro, Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam,
All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know Whither he went, or whence he came, or why He made one of the multitude, and so
Was borne amid the crowd, as through the sky One of the million leaves of summer's bier; Old age and youth, manhood and infancy,
Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear: Some flying from the thing they feared, and some Seeking the object of another's fear;
And others as with steps towards the tomb, Pored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath, And others mournfully within the gloom
Of their own shadow walked and called it death; And some fled from it as it were a ghost, Half fainting in the affliction of vain breath:
But more, with motions which each other crost, Pursued or spurned the shadows the clouds threw, Or birds within the noon-day ether lost,
Upon that path where flowers never grew,- And weary with vain toil and faint for thirst, Heard not the fountains, whose melodious dew
Out of their mossy cells for ever burst; Nor felt the breeze which from the forest told Of grassy paths and wood, lawn-interspersed,
With over-arching elms and caverns cold, And violet banks where sweet dreams brood, but they Pursued their serious folly as of old.
And as I gazed, methought that in the way The throng grew wilder, as the woods of June When the south wind shakes the extinguished day,
And a cold glare intenser than the noon, But icy cold, obscured with blinding light The sun, as he the stars. Like the young moon
When on the sunlit limits of the night Her white shell trembles amid crimson air, And whilst the sleeping tempest gathers might,
Doth, as the herald of its coming, bear The ghost of its dead mother, whose dim form Bends in dark ether from her infant's chair,-
So came a chariot on the silent storm
Of its own rushing splendour, and a Shape So sate within, as one whom years deform,
Beneath a dusky hood and double cape, Crouching within the shadow of a tomb; And o'er what seemed the head a cloud-like crape
Was bent, a dun and faint ethereal gloom Tempering the light:upon the chariot beam A Janus-visaged shadow did assume
The guidance of that wonder-winged team; The shapes which drew it in thick lightnings Were lost:-I heard alone on the air's soft stream
The music of their ever-moving wings. All the four faces of that charioteer Had their eyes banded; little profit brings
Speed in the van and blindness in the rear, Nor then avail the beams that quench the sun Or that with banded eyes could pierce the sphere
Of all that is, has been, or will be done; So ill was the car guided--but it past With solemn speed majestically on.
The crowd gave way, and I arose aghast, Or seemed to rise, so mighty was the trance, And saw, like clouds upon the thunder's blast,
The million with fierce song and maniac dance Raging around-such seemed the jubilee As when, to meet some conqueror's advance,
Imperial Rome poured forth her living sea From senate-house, and forum, and theatre, When [ ] upon the free
Had bound a yoke, which soon they stooped to bear. Nor wanted here the just similitude Of a triumphal pageant, for where'er
The chariot rolled, a captive multitude
Was driven; all those who had grown old in power Or misery,—all who had their age subdued
By action or by suffering, and whose hour Was drained to its last sand in weal or woe, So that the trunk survived both fruit and flower;-
All those whose fame or infamy must grow Till the great winter lay the form and name Of this green earth with them for ever low;—
All but the sacred few who could not tame Their spirits to the conquerors-but as soon As they had touched the world with living flame,
Fled back like eagles to their native noon, Or those who put aside the diadem Of earthly thrones or gems [
Were there, of Athens or Jerusalem, Were neither 'mid the mighty captives seen, Nor 'mid the ribald crowd that followed them,
Nor those who went before fierce and obscene. The wild dance maddens in the van, and those Who lead it-fleet as shadows on the green,
Outspeed the chariot, and without repose Mix with each other in tempestuous measure To savage music, wilder as it grows,
They, tortured by their agonizing pleasure, Convulsed and on the rapid whirlwinds spun Of that fierce spirit whose unholy leisure
Was soothed by mischief since the world begun,Throw back their heads and loose their streaming hair;
And in their dance round her who dims the sun,
Maidens and youths fling their wild arms in air; As their feet twinkle they recede, and now Bending within each other's atmosphere
Kindle invisibly-and as they glow, Like moths by light attracted and repelled, Oft to their bright destruction come and go,
Till like two clouds into one vale impelled That shake the mountains when their lightnings mingle
And die in rain-the fiery band which held
Their natures, snaps-the shock still may tingle; One falls and then another in the path Senseless-nor is the desolation single,
Yet ere I can say where-the chariot hath Past over them-nor other trace I find But as of foam after the ocean's wrath
Is spent upon the desert shore;-behind, Old men and women foully disarrayed, Shake their grey hairs in the insulting wind,
And follow in the dance, with limbs decayed, Seeking to reach the light which leaves them still Farther behind and deeper in the shade.
But not the less with impotence of will They wheel, though ghastly shadows interpose Round them and round each other, and fulfil
Their part, and in the dust from whence they rose Sink, and corruption veils them as they lie, And past in these performs what [ ] in these.
Struck to the heart by this sad pageantry, Half to myself I said-And what is this! Whose shape is that within the car? And why-
I would have added-is all here amiss!- But a voice answered-" Life!" I turned, and knew (O Heaven, have mercy on such wretchedness')
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