Better than all measures Of delightful sound Better than all treasures That in books are found Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground! Teach me half the gladness That thy brain must know, Such harmonious madness From my lips would flow, The world should listen then - as I am listening now. 100 105 1820. ODE TO LIBERTY. Yet, Freedom, yet thy banner torn but flying, I. A GLORIOUS people vibrated again The lightning of the nations: Liberty BYRON. From heart to heart, from tower to tower, o'er Spain, Gleamed. My soul spurned the chains of its dismay, Clothed itself, sublime and strong; As a young eagle soars the morning clouds among, Till from its station in the heaven of fame As foam from a ship's swiftness, when there came 5 IO 15 II. The Sun and the serenest Moon sprang forth: Hung in its cloud of all-sustaining air: But this divinest universe Was yet a chaos and a curse, For thou wert not: but power from worst producing worse, The spirit of the beasts was kindled there, And of the birds, and of the watery forms, And there was war among them, and despair Within them, raging without truce or terms: The bosom of their violated nurse Groaned, for beasts warred on beasts, and worms on worms, And men on men; each heart was as a hell of storms. 30 III. Man, the imperial shape, then multiplied His generations under the pavilion Of the Sun's throne: palace and pyramid, Were, as to mountain-wolves their ragged caves. Temple and prison, to many a swarming million, This human living multitude Was savage, cunning, blind, and rude, For thou wert not; but o'er the populous solitude, 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, 35 40 side. 45 IV. The nodding promontories, and blue isles, And cloud-like mountains, and dividuous waves On the unapprehensive wild The vine, the corn, the olive mild, Grew savage yet, to human use unreconciled; 50 Like the man's thought dark in the infant's brain, 55 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 Ægean main 60 V. Athens arose a city such as vision Builds from the purple crags and silver towers Of battlemented cloud, as in derision By thunder-zonèd winds, each head Within its cloudy wings with sunfire garlanded, 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 It trembles, but it cannot pass away! Religion veils her eyes; Oppression shrinks aghast: 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 delight renew. VII. Then Rome was, and from thy deep bosom fairest, 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 whiteness, Thou didst desert, with spirit-winged lightness, 80 90 95 100 Slaves of one tyrant: Palatinus sighed Thou didst delay to hear, lamenting to disown. 105 VIII. From what Hyrcanian glen or frozen hill, Didst thou lament the ruin of thy reign, Teaching the woods, and waves, and desert rocks, To talk in echoes sad and stern, Of that sublimest lore which man had dared unlearn? ΠΟ Of the Scald's dreams, nor haunt the Druid's sleep. 115 What if the tears rained through thy shattered locks Were quickly dried? for thou didst groan, not weep When from its sea of death to kill and burn, The Galilean serpent forth did creep, And made thy world an undistinguishable heap. 120 IX. A thousand years the Earth cried, Where art thou? And many a warrior-peopled citadel, Like rocks which fire lifts out of the flat deep, Frowning o'er the tempestuous sea Of kings, and priests, and slaves, in tower-crowned majesty; That multitudinous anarchy did sweep, 125 And burst around their walls, like idle foam, Whilst from the human spirit's deepest deep I 30 Strange melody with love and awe struck dumb Dissonant arms; and Art, which cannot die, Fit imagery to pave heaven's everlasting dome. 135 |