XXIV.

"The seeds are sleeping in the soil: meanwhile The tyrant peoples dungeons with his prey; Pale victims on the guarded scaffold smile Because they cannot speak; and, day by day, The moon of wasting Science wanes away Among her stars, and in that darkness vast The sons of earth to their foul idols pray, And grey Priests triumph, and like blight or blast A shade of selfish care o'er human looks is cast.

XXV.

"This is the Winter of the world;-and here We die, even as the winds of Autumn fade, Expiring in the frore and foggy air.- [made Behold! Spring comes, though we must pass, who The promise of its birth,-even as the shade Which from our death, as from a mountain, flings The future, a broad sunrise; thus arrayed As with the plumes of overshadowing wings, From its dark gulf of chains, Earth like an eagle springs.

XXVI.

"O dearest love! we shall be dead and cold
Before this morn may on the world arise:
Wouldst thou the glory of its dawn behold?
Alas! gaze not on me, but turn thine eyes
On thine own heart-it is a paradise

Which everlasting spring has made its own,
And while drear Winter fills the naked skies,
Sweet streams of sunny thought, and flowers fresh
blown

Are there, and weave their sounds and odours into

one.

XXVII.

"In their own hearts the earnest of the hope Which made them great, the good will ever find; And though some envious shade may interlope Between the effect and it, one comes behind, Who aye the future to the past will bindNecessity, whose sightless strength for ever Evil with evil, good with good, must wind In bands of union, which no power may sever: They must bring forth their kind, and be divided never!

XXVIII.

"The good and mighty of departed ages
Are in their graves, the innocent and free,
Heroes, and Poets, and prevailing Sages,
Who leave the vesture of their majesty

To adorn and clothe this naked world;-and we
Are like to them--such perish, but they leave
All hope, or love, or truth, or liberty,
Whose forms their mighty spirits could conceive
To be a rule and law to ages that survive.

ΧΧΙΧ.

"So be the turf heaped over our remains Even in our happy youth, and that strange lot Whate'er it be, when in these mingling veins The blood is still, be ours; let sense and thought

Pass from our being, or be numbered not Among the things that are; let those who come Behind, for whom our stedfast will has bought A calm inheritance, a glorious doom, Insult with careless tread our undivided tomb.

These are blind fancies. Reason cannot know
What sense can neither feel, nor thought conceive;
There is delusion in the world—and woe,
And fear, and pain-we know not whence we live,
Or why, or how, or what mute Power may give
Their being to each plant, and star, and beast,
Or even these thoughts.-Come near me! I do
A chain I cannot break-I am possest [weave
With thoughts too swift and strong for one lone
human breast.

Though she had ceased, her countenance, uplifted To heaven, still spake, with solemn glory bright; Her dark deep eyes, her lips, whose motions gifted The air they breathed with love, her locks undight; "Fair star of life and love," I cried," my soul's deWhy lookest thou on the crystalline skies? [light, O that my spirit were yon Heaven of night, Which gazes on thee with its thousand eyes!" She turned to me and smiled-that smile was Paradise!

VI.

Fertile in prodigies and lies; so there Strange natures made a brotherhood of ill. The desert savage ceased to grasp in fear His Asian shield and bow, when, at the will Of Europe's subtler son, the bolt would kill Some shepherd sitting on a rock secure ; But smiles of wondering joy bis face would fill, And savage sympathy: those slaves impure, Each one the other thus from ill to ill did lure.

XLII.

Ere night the pyre was piled, the net of iron Was spread above, the fearful couch below; It overtopped the towers that did environ That spacious square; for Fear is never slow To build the thrones of Hate, her mate and foe, So, she scourged forth the maniac multitude To rear this pyramid-tottering and slow, Plague-stricken, foodless, like lean herds pursued By gad-flies, they have piled the heath, and gums, and wood.

XLIII.

Night came, a starless and a moonless gloom. Until the dawn, those hosts of many a nation Stood round that pile, as near one lover's tomb Two gentle sisters mourn their desolation; And in the silence of that expectation, Was heard on high the reptiles' hiss and crawlIt was so deep, save when the devastation Of the swift pest with fearful interval, Marking its path with shrieks, among the crowd would fall.

XLIV.

Morn came.-Among those sleepless multitudes, Madness, and Fear, and Plague, and Famine, still Heaped corpse on corpse, as in autumnal woods The frosts of many a wind with dead leaves fill Earth's cold and sullen brooks. In silence still The pale survivors stood; ere noon, the fear Of hell became a panic, which did kill Like hunger or disease, with whispers drear, As" Hush! hark! Come they yet? Just Heaven! thine hour is near!"

XLV

And Priests rushed through their ranks, some counterfeiting

The rage they did inspire, some mad indeed With their own lies. They said their god was waiting To see his enemies writhe, and burn, and bleed,And that, till then, the snakes of Hell had need Of human souls.-Three hundred furnaces [speed, Soon blazed through the wide City, where, with Men brought their infidel kindred to appease God's wrath, and while they burned, knelt round on quivering knees.

XLVI.

The noontide sun was darkened with that smoke, The winds of eve dispersed those ashes grey. The madness which these rites had lulled, awoke Again at sunset.-Who shall dare to say The deeds which night and fear brought forth, or In balance just the good and evil there? [weigh He might man's deep and searchless heart display, And cast a light on those dim labyrinths, where Hope, near imagined chasms, is struggling with despair.

XLVII.

"Tis said, a mother dragged three children then, To those fierce flames which roast the eyes in the And laughed and died; and that unholy men, [head, Feasting like fiends upon the infidel dead, Looked from their meal, and saw an Angel tread The visible floor of Heaven, and it was she! And, on that night, one without doubt or dread Came to the fire, and said, "Stop, I am he! Kill me!"-They burned them both with hellish mockery.