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 Though from their hundred gates the Didst thou not start to hear Spain's leagued Oppressors, With hurried legions move! Hail, hail, all hail! ANTISTROPHE a What though Cimmerian Anarchs dare blaspheme As athlete stript to run From a remoter station The serene Heaven which wraps our 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 For the high prize lost on Philippi's All things which live and are, within the 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; The crash and darkness of a thousand O bid those beams be each a blinding And raise thy sons, as o'er the prone horizon Ye, follow the bier Thy lamp feeds every twilight wave with And make her grave green with tear on Follow the bier Of the dead cold year, I And like dim shadows watch by her DEATH is here and death is there, sepulchre. Death is busy everywhere, II Death has set his mark and seal On all we are and all we feel, The blithe swallows are flown, and the On all we know and all we fear, 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 From a single cloud the lightning flashes, Whilst a thousand isles are illumined around, From the horizon—and the stainless sky 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 Earthquake is trampling one city to ashes, 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, The brazen -gated temples, and the And they learn little there, except to 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, 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 Which we all tread, a cavern huge and YE hasten to the grave! What seek ye 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? The gap of some cleft mountain, lifted Oh thou quick heart which pantest to high Into the whirlwinds of the upper sky. possess All that pale expectation feigneth fair! |