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 armed 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!

Wave thy lightning lance in mirth

Nor let thy high heart fail,

wearer;

A new Acteon's error

theirs have been--devoured by their own hounds

Be thou like the imperial Basilisk Killing thy foe with unapparent wounds! Gaze on oppression, till at that dread risk

Aghast she pass from the Earth's disk: Fear not, but gaze-for freemen mightier

leagued Oppressors,

With hurried legions move! Hail, hail, all hail!

ANTISTROPHE a

blaspheme

As athlete stript to run

From a remoter station

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; 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

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 B

Great Spirit, deepest Love! Which rulest and dost move

shore :

As then Hope, Truth, and Justice did

avail,

So now may Fraud and Wrong! O

hail!

EPODE 1 β

Hear ye the march as of the Earth-born

Forms

Arrayed against the ever-living Gods?

Italian shore;

And raise thy sons, as o'er the prone

horizon

Ye, follow the bier
Of the dead cold year,

Follow the bier

Of the dead cold year,

I

sepulchre.

Death is busy everywhere,
All around, within, beneath,
Above is death-and we are death.

II

Death has set his mark and seal On all we are and all we feel,

lizards each gone

To his dwelling;

Come, months, come away; Put on white, black, and gray;

Let your light sisters play

III

First our pleasures die-and then
Our hopes, and then our fears-and when

From a single cloud the lightning flashes, Whilst a thousand isles are illumined around,

From the horizon—and the stainless sky
Opens beyond them like eternity.
All things rejoiced beneath the sun; the
weeds,

The river, and the corn-fields, and the reeds;

The willow leaves that glanced in the And the firm foliage of the larger trees. light breeze,

It was a winter such as when birds die In the deep forests; and the fishes lie

ing; the sound

Is bellowing underground.

III

But keener thy gaze than the lightning's glare,

And swifter thy step than the earthquake's tramp; Thou deafenest the rage of the ocean; thy stare

Makes blind the volcanoes; the sun's bright lamp

To thine is a fen-fire damp.

IV

From billow and mountain and exhala

tion

The sunlight is darted through vapour and blast;

From spirit to spirit, from nation to nation,

Upon some prison homes, whose dwellers

rave

For bread, and gold, and blood: pain, linked to guilt,

Agitates the light flame of their hours, Until its vital oil is spent or spilt :

There stands the pile, a tower amid the

towers

And sacred domes; each marble-ribbed

roof,

know

That shadows follow them where'er they go.

THE WORLD'S WANDERERS

I

TELL me, thou star, whose wings of light

Speed thee in thy fiery flight,
In what cavern of the night

Will thy pinions close now?

II

Tell me, moon, thou pale and gray Pilgrim of heaven's homeless way, In what depth of night or day

Seekest thou repose now?

III

Weary wind, who wanderest Like the world's rejected guest, Hast thou still some secret nest On the tree or billow?

A PORTAL as of shadowy adamant

Stands yawning on the highway of the

life

SONNET

gaunt;

Around it rages an unceasing strife

Of shadows, like the restless clouds that

haunt

there,

Ye restless thoughts and busy purposes Of the idle brain, which the world's livery wear?

high

Into the whirlwinds of the upper sky.

possess

All that pale expectation feigneth fair!