That the pale name of PRIEST might shrink and dwindle1
Into the hell from which it first was hurled,
A scoff of impious pride from fiends impure,

Till human thoughts might kneel alone,
Each before the judgment-throne

Of its own aweless soul, or of the power unknown!
O, that the words which make the thoughts obscure
From which they spring, as clouds of glimmering dew
From a white lake blot heaven's blue portraiture,

Were stript of their thin masks and various hue
And frowns and smiles and splendours not their own,
Till in the nakedness of false and true

They stand before their Lord, each to receive its due.

XVII.

He who taught man to vanquish whatsoever
Can be between the cradle and the grave

Crowned him the King of Life. O vain endeavour!
If on his own high will a willing slave,

He has enthroned the oppression and the oppressor.
What if earth can clothe and feed

Amplest millions at their need,

And power in thought be as the tree within the seed?
O, what if Art, an ardent intercessor,

Driving on fiery wings to Nature's throne,
Checks the great mother stooping to caress her,

And cries: Give me, thy child, dominion

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.

1 That he did to the last regard it [the Christian religion] as by all historical evidence the invariable accomplice of tyranny-as at once the constant shield and ready spear of force and fraud-his latest letters show as clearly as that he did no injustice to "the sublime human character" of its founder.-SWINBURNE.

XVIII.

Come Thou, but lead out of the inmost cave
Of man's deep spirit, as the morning-star
Beckons the Sun from the Eoan wave,
Wisdom. I hear the pennons of her car
Self-moving, like cloud charioted by flame;
Comes she not, and come ye not,
Rulers of eternal thought,

To judge, with solemn truth, life's ill-apportioned lot?
Blind Love, and equal Justice, and the Fame

Of what has been, the Hope of what will be? O, Liberty! if such could be thy name

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
To its abyss was suddenly withdrawn;
Then, as a wild swan, when sublimely winging
Its path athwart the thunder-smoke of dawn,
Sinks headlong through the aërial golden light
On the heavy sounding plain,

When the bolt has pierced its brain;

As summer clouds dissolve, unburthened of their rain; As a far taper fades with fading night,

As a brief insect dies with dying day, My song, its pinions disarrayed of might, Drooped; o'er it closed the echoes far away Of the great voice which did its flight sustain, As waves which lately paved his watery way Hiss round a drowner's head in their tempestuous play.

ARETHUSA.

I.

Arethusa arose

From her couch of snows

In the Acroceraunian mountains,-
From cloud and from crag,
With many a jag,

Shepherding her bright fountains.

She leapt down the rocks,

With her rainbow locks Streaming among the streams;Her steps paved with green The downward ravine

Which slopes to the western gleams: And gliding and springing

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.

II.

Then Alpheus bold,

On his glacier cold,

With his trident the mountains strook

And opened a chasm

In the rocks;-with the spasm

All Erymanthus shook.

And the black south wind

It concealed behind

The urns of the silent snow,

And earthquake and thunder
Did rend in sunder

The bars of the springs below:
The beard and the hair

Of the River-god were

Seen through the torrent's sweep,
As he followed the light

Of the fleet nymph's flight
To the brink of the Dorian deep.

III.

"Oh, save me! Oh, guide me! And bid the deep hide me, For he grasps me now by the hair!" The loud Ocean heard,

To its blue depth stirred,

And divided at her prayer;

And under the water

The Earth's white daughter

Fled like a sunny beam;

Behind her descended

Her billows, unblended

With the brackish Dorian stream:

Like a gloomy stain

On the emerald main

Alpheus rushed behind,

As an eagle pursuing

A dove to its ruin

Down the streams of the cloudy wind.

IV.

Under the bowers

Where the Ocean Powers

Sit on their pearlèd thrones,

Through the coral woods

Of the weltering floods,

Over heaps of unvalued stones;
Through the dim beams

Which amid the streams

Weave a net-work of coloured light;
And under the caves,

Where the shadowy waves

Are as green as the forest's night:—
Outspeeding the shark,

And the sword-fish dark,

Under the ocean foam,

And up through the rifts

Of the mountain clifts They past to their Dorian home.

V.

And now from their fountains

In Enna's mountains,

Down one vale where the morning basks, Like friends once parted

Grown single-hearted,

They ply their watery tasks.
At sunrise they leap

From their cradles steep

In the cave of the shelving hill;
At noon-tide they flow
Through the woods below

And the meadows of Asphodel;
And at night they sleep
In the rocking deep

Beneath the Ortygian shore;

Like spirits that lie

In the azure sky

When they love but live no more.