45

Made the invisible water white as snow;
From that Typhæan mount, Inarime,
There streamed a sunlight vapour, like the standard

Of some ætherial host;

Whilst from all the coast,
Louder and louder, gathering round, there wandered
Over the oracular woods and divine sea
Prophesyings which grew articulate -
They seize me - I must speak them — be they fate !

50

STROPHE a. I.

55

Naples ! thou Heart of men which ever pantest

Naked, beneath the lidless eye of heaven! Elysian City which to calm enchantest

The mutinous air and sea : they round thee, even

As sleep round Love, are driven ! Metropolis of a ruined Paradise

Long lost, late won, and yet but half regained ! Bright Altar of the bloodless sacrifice,

Which armèd Victory offers up unstained

To Love, the flower-enchained !
Thou which wert once, and then didst cease to be,
Now art, and henceforth ever shalt be, free,
If Hope, and Truth, and Justice can avail,

Hail, hail, all hail !

60

65

STROPHE B. 2.

Thou youngest giant birth

Which from the groaning earth
Leap'st, clothed in armour of impenetrable scale !

Last of the Intercessors !

Who 'gainst the Crowned Transgressors Pleadest before God's love! Arrayed in Wisdom's mail,

70

Wave thy lightning lance in mirth,

Nor let thy high heart fail, Though from their hundred gates the leagued Oppressors, With hurried legions move!

75 Hail, hail, all hail !

ANTISTROPHE a.

What though Cimmerian Anarchs dare blaspheme

Freedom and thee? thy shield is as a mirror
To make their blind slaves see, and with fierce gleam
To turn his hungry sword the
upon

80

wearer; A new Actæon's error Shall theirs have been devoured by their own hounds!

Be thou like the imperial Basilisk Killing thy foe with unapparent wounds!

85 Gaze on oppression, till at that dread risk

Aghast she pass from the Earth's disk: Fear not, but gaze

for freemen mightier grow, And slaves more feeble, gazing on their foe;

If Hope and Truth and Justice may avail,
Thou shalt be great.

All hail !

90

95

ANTISTROPHE B. 2.
From Freedom's form divine,

From Nature's inmost shrine,
Strip every impious gawd, rend Error veil by veil :

O’er Ruin desolate,

O’er Falsehood's fallen state,
Sit thou sublime, unawed; be the Destroyer pale !

And equal laws be thine,

And winged words let sail,
Freighted with truth even from the throne of God:

That wealth, surviving fate,
Be thine. All hail !

100 ANTISTROPHE a. y.

105

Didst thou not start to hear Spain's thrilling pæan

From land to land re-echoed solemnly,
Till silence became music? From the Ææan

To the cold Alps, eternal Italy

Starts to hear thine! The Sea
Which paves the desert streets of Venice laughs

In light and music ; widowed Genoa wan
By moonlight spells ancestral epitaphs,
Murmuring, where is Doria ? fair Milan,

Within whose veins long ran
The viper's palsying venom, lifts her heel
To bruise his head. The signal and the seal

(If Hope and Truth and Justice can avail)
Art Thou of all these hopes. -O hail !

IIO

115

I 20

ANTISTROPHE B. 7.
Florence! beneath the sun,

Of cities fairest one,
Blushes within her bower for Freedom's expectation :

From eyes of quenchless hope

Rome tears the priestly cope,
As ruling once by power, so now by admiration,

As athlete stripped to run

From a remoter station
For the high prize lost on Philippi's shore :-

As then Hope, Truth, and Justice did avail,
So now may Fraud and Wrong! O hail !

125

EPODE 1. ß. Hear

ye

the march as of the Earth-born Forms
Arrayed against the ever-living Gods?
The crash and darkness of a thousand storms
Bursting their inaccessible abodes

Of crags and thunder-clouds ?

130

See ye the banners blazoned to the day,

Inwrought with emblems of barbaric pride?
Dissonant threats kill Silence far away ;
The serene Heaven which wraps our Eden wide 135

With iron light is dyed ;
The Anarchs of the North lead forth their legions

Like Chaos o'er creation, uncreating;
An hundred tribes nourished on strange religions
And lawless slaveries, - down the aërial regions

Of the white Alps, desolating,

Famished wolves that bide no waiting, Blotting the glowing footsteps of old glory, Trampling our columned cities into dust, Their dull and savage lust

145 On Beauty's corse to sickness satiating They come! The fields they tread look black and hoary With fire — from their red feet the streams run gory!

140

150

155

EPODE II. ß.
Great Spirit, deepest Love!

Which rulest, and dost move
All things which live and are, within the Italian shore;

Who spreadest heaven around it,

Whose woods, rocks, waves, surround it,
Who sittest in thy star, o'er Ocean's western floor ;
Spirit of beauty! at whose soft command
The sunbeams and the showers distil its foison

From the Earth's bosom chill;
O bid those beams be each a blinding brand
Of lightning! bid those showers be dews of poison !

Bid the Earth's plenty kill
Bid thy bright Heaven above,
Whilst light and darkness bound it,
Be their tomb who planned
To make it ours and thine !

160

Or, with thine harmonizing ardours fill

165 And raise thy sons, as o'er the prone horizon Thy lamp feeds every twilight wave with fireBe man's high hope and unextinct desire The instrument to work thy will divine ! Then clouds from sunbeams, antelopes from leopards, 170

And frowns and fears from Thee,

Would not more swiftly flee
Than Celtic wolves from the Ausonian shepherds. —
Whatever, Spirit, from thy starry shrine
Thou yieldest or withholdest, Oh let be

175 This city of thy worship ever free! August 17-25, 1820.

GOOD NIGHT.

I.

Good night? ah! no; the hour is ill

Which severs those it should unite;
Let us remain together still,

Then it will be good night.

II.

5

How can I call the lone night good,

Though thy sweet wishes wing its flight?
Be it not said, thought, understood,

Then it will be good night.

III.

IO

To hearts which near each other move

From evening close to morning light,
The night is good ; because, my love,

They never say good night.

1820.