ANTISTROPHE B. 2. From Freedom's form divine, From Nature's inmost shrine, Strip every impious gaud, 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! ANTISTROPHE α. y. Didst thou not start to hear Spain's thrilling paan Starts to hear thine! The Sea Which paves the desert streets of Venice, laughs The viper's † palsying venom, lifts her heel To bruise his head. The signal and the seal †The viper was the armorial device of the Visconti, tyrants of Milan. If Hope, and Truth, and Justice can avail, ANTISTROPHE ẞ. y. 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,An athlete stript 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! EPODE I. B. Hear ye the march as of the Earth-born Forms The crash and darkness of a thousand storms Of crags and thunder-clouds? 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 With iron light is dyed, The Anarchs of the North lead forth their legions Like chaos o'er creation, uncreating; A 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 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! EPODE II. 3. 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 poi son! Bid the Earth's plenty kill! Whilst light and darkness bound it, To make it ours and thine! Or, with thine harmonizing ardours fill Then clouds from sunbeams, antelopes from leopards, And frowns and fears from Thee, Than Celtic wolves from the Ausonian shepherds. Whatever, Spirit, from thy starry shrine AUTUMN; A DIRGE. THE warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wail ing, [dying; The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are And the year On the earth, her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead, Is lying. Come, months, come away, In your saddest array; Of the dead cold year, And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre. The chill rain is falling, the nipt worm is crawl ing, The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling For the year; The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone To his dwelling; Come, months, come away; Of the dead cold year, And make her grave green with tear on tear. DEATH. DEATH is here, and death is there, Death is busy everywhere, All around, within, beneath, Above, is death-and we are death. |