That the pale name of PRIEST might shrink and dwindle1 Till human thoughts might kneel alone, Of its own aweless soul, or of the power unknown! Were stript of their thin masks and various hue They stand before their Lord, each to receive its due. XVII. He who taught man to vanquish whatsoever Crowned him the King of Life. O vain endeavour! He has enthroned the oppression and the oppressor. Amplest millions at their need, And power in thought be as the tree within the seed? Driving on fiery wings to Nature's throne, 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 To judge, with solemn truth, life's ill-apportioned lot? 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 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,- 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 The bars of the springs below: Of the River-god were Seen through the torrent's sweep, Of the fleet nymph's flight 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; Which amid the streams Weave a net-work of coloured light; Where the shadowy waves Are as green as the forest's night:— 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. From their cradles steep In the cave of the shelving hill; And the meadows of Asphodel; Beneath the Ortygian shore; Like spirits that lie In the azure sky When they love but live no more. |