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The seed ye sow, another reaps;
The wealth ye find, another keeps ;
The robes ye weave, another wears ;
The arms ye forge, another bears.

Sow seed, but let no tyrant reap;
Find wealth,-let no impostor heap;
Weave robes,-let not the idle wear;
Forge arms,-in your defence to bear.

Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells;
In halls ye deck, another dwells.

Why shake the chains ye wrought? Ye see
The steel ye tempered glance on ye.

With plough and spade, and hoe and loom,
Trace your grave, and build your tomb,
And weave your winding-sheet, till fair
England be your sepulchre.

ENGLAND IN 1819.

AN old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king; Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow Through public scorn-mud from a muddy spring;

Rulers, who neither see, nor feel, nor know,

But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow;
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field;
An army, which liberticide and prey

Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield;
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless-a book sealed;
A Senate-Time's worst statute unrepealed,―
Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.

SIMILES

FOR TWO POLITICAL CHARACTERS OF 1819.

As from an ancestral oak

Two empty ravens sound their clarion,

Yell by yell, and croak by croak,

When they scent the noonday smoke

Of fresh human carrion;

As two gibbering night-birds flit,

From their bowers of deadly hue, Through the night to frighten it, When the morn is in a fit,

And the stars are none or few;

As a shark and dog-fish wait
Under an Atlantic isle,

For the negro-ship, whose freight
Is the theme of their debate,

Wrinkling their red gills the while→

Are ye, two vultures sick for battle,

Two scorpions under one wet stone,

Two bloodless wolves whose dry throats rattle, Two crows perched on the murrained cattle, Two vipers tangled into one.

AN ODE

TO THE ASSERTORS OF LIBERTY.

ARISE, arise, arise!

There is blood on the earth that denies ye bread; Be your wounds like eyes

To weep for the dead, the dead, the dead. What other grief were it just to pay?

Your sons, your wives, your brethren, were they; Who said they were slain on the battle-day?

Awaken, awaken, awaken!

The slave and the tyrant are twin-born foes;
Be the cold chains shaken

To the dust, where your kindred repose, repose:

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Their bones in the grave will start and move,
When they hear the voices of those they love,
Most loud in the holy combat above.

Wave, wave high the banner!

When Freedom is riding to conquest by:
Though the slaves that fan her

Be famine and toil, giving sigh for sigh.
And ye who attend her imperial car,
Lift not your hands in the banded war,
But in her defence whose children ye are.

Glory, glory, glory,

To those who have greatly suffered and done! Never name in story

Was greater than that which ye shall have won. Conquerors have conquered their foes alone, Whose revenge, pride, and power, they have overthrown :

Ride ye, more victorious, over your own.

Bind, bind every brow

With crownals of violet, ivy, and pine:

Hide the blood-stains now

With hues which sweet nature has made divine,Green strength, azure hope, and eternity. But let not the pansy among them be; Ye were injured, and that means memory.

ODE TO HEAVEN.

CHORUS OF SPIRITS.

FIRST SPIRIT.

PALACE-ROOF of cloudless nights!
Paradise of golden lights!

Deep, immeasurable, vast,

Which art now and which wert then
Of the present and the past,
Of the eternal where and when,
Presence-chamber, temple, home;
Ever-canopying dome,

Of acts and ages yet to come!

Glorious shapes have life in thee,
Earth, and all earth's company;

Living globes which ever throng Thy deep chasms and wildernesses; And green worlds that glide along; And swift stars with flashing tresses ;

And icy moons most cold and bright, And mighty suns beyond the night, Atoms of intensest light.

Even thy name is as a god,
for thou art the abode

Heaven

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