ΧΙ. 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! Like shadows: as if day had cloven the skies XII. Thou heaven of earth! what spells could pall thee then, Bred from the slime of deep oppression's den, Round France, the ghastly vintage, stood The Anarch of thine own bewildered powers, Rose armies mingled in obscure array, Like clouds with clouds, darkening the sacred bowers Of serene heaven. He, by the past pursued, Rests with those dead but unforgotten hours, Whose ghosts scare victor kings in their ancestral towers. 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 Eolian isle From Pithecusa to Pelorus Howls, and leaps, and glares in chorus: They cry, Be dim, ye lamps of heaven suspended o'er us, 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! Time cannot dare conceal XIV. Tomb of Arminius! render up thy dead Till, like a standard from a watch-tower's staff, His dead spirit lives in thee. Why do we fear or hope? thou art already free! And glorious world! thou flowery wilderness! 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 So that this blot upon the page of fame Were as the 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, The axes and the rods which awe mankind; The sound has poison in it, 'tis the sperm To set thine armed heel on this reluctant worm. XVI. O that the wise from their bright minds would kindle Till human thoughts might kneel alone, Of its own aweless soul, or of the power unknown! They stand before their Lord, each to receive its due XVII. He who taught man to vanquish whatsoever He has enthroned the oppression and the oppressor. Amplest millions at their need, And power in thought be as the tree within the seed? Diving on fiery wings to Nature's throne, 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 To judge with solemn truth life's ill-apportioned lot? 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 When the bolt has pierced its brain; As summer clouds dissolve unburthened of their rain; As a brief insect dies with dying day, My song, its pinions disarrayed of might, Of the great voice which did its flight sustain, Hiss round a drowner's head in their tempestuous play. LL ARETHUSA. ARETHUSA arose From her couch of snows In the Acroceraunian mountains,-- Shepherding her bright fountains. Which slopes to the western gleams: 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 apasm All Erymanthus shook. And the black south wind It concealed behind The urns of the silent snow, And earthquake and thunder The bars of the springs below: Seen through the torrent's sweep, To the brink of the Dorian deep. "Oh, save me! Oh, guide me! And divided at her prayer; The Earth's white daughter Р13А. Fled like a sunny beam; Behind her descended Her billows, unblended With the brackish Dorian stream: On the emerald main Alpheus rushed behind,— A dove to its ruin Down the streams of the cloudy wind. Under the bowers Where the Ocean Powers Sit on their pearled thrones: Over heaps of unvalued stones; Weave a not-work of coloured light; Where the shadowy waves Are as green as the forest's night :- 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 baskɛ, They ply their watery tasks. At sunrise they leap From their cradles steep In the cave of the shelving hill; And the meadows of Asphodel; Beneath the Ortygian shore;- In the azure sky When they love but live no more. |