Like shadows: as if day had cloven the skies At dreaming midnight o'er the western wave, Men started, staggering with a glad surprise, Under the lightnings of thine unfamiliar eyes. XII. Thou heaven of earth! what spells could pall thee then, Dyed all thy liquid light with blood and tears, Round France, the ghastly vintage, stood Destruction's sceptred slaves, and folly's mitred brood! When one, like them, but mightier far than they, The Anarch of thine own bewilder'd powers, Rose: armies mingled in obscure array Like clouds with clouds, darkening the sacred Of serene heaven. He, by the past pursued, Tomb of Arminius! render up thy dead, Till, like a standard from a watch-tower's staff, His soul may stream over the tyrant's head! Why do we fear or hope? thou art already free! And glorious world! thou flowery wilderness! Worships the thing thou wert! O Italy, XV. O, that the free would stamp the impious name Were as a serpent's path, which the light air Into the hell from which it first was hurl'd, 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 hur And frowns and smiles and splendors not their ow 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 Crown'd him the King of Life. O vain endeavor! If on his own high will, a willing slave, What if earth can clothe and feed And power in thought be as the tree within the seed? Diving on fiery wings to Nature's throne, Checks the great mother stooping to carese her And cries: Give me, thy child, dominion Over all heighth 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 use XVIII. Come Thou, but lead out of the inmost cave To judge, with solemn truth, life's ill-apportion'd ha Wert thou disjoin'd 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 harmo XIX. Paused, and the spirit of that mighty singing To its abyss was suddenly withdrawn: Then, as a wild swan, when sublimely winging On the heavy-sounding plain, When the bolt has pierced its brain; From the unknown graves As summer clouds dissolve, unburthen'd of their rain; Made the invisible water white as snow; As a far taper fades with fading night, As a brief insect dies with dying day, My song, its pinions disarray'd of might, Droop'd; 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. ODE TO NAPLES.* EPODE I. α. I STOOD within the city disinterr'd; + And heard the autumnal leaves like light footfalls Of spirits passing through the streets; and heard The Mountain's slumberous voice at intervals Thrill through those roofless halls; The listening soul in my suspended blood; I felt, but heard not-through white columns The isle-sustaining Ocean flood, A plane of light between two Heavens of azure: The wreaths of stony myrtle, ivy and pine, Because the crystal silence of the air Weigh'd on their life; even as the Power divine, Naples! thou Heart of men which ever pantest Elysian City, which to calm enchantest The mutinous air and sea! they round thee, even Long lost, late won, and yet but half regain'd! Which armed Victory offers up unstain'd Thou which wert once, and then did cease to be, STROPHE β. 2. Thou youngest giant birth Who 'gainst the Crown'd Transgressors Which then lull'd all things, brooded upon mine. Though from their hundred gates the leagued Op EPODE 11. a. Then gentle winds arose, With many a mingled close Of wild Æolian sound and mountain odor keen; Within, above, around its bowers of starry green, It bore me like an Angel, o'er the waves * The Author has connected many recollections of his visit to Pompeii and Baiæ with the enthusiasm excited by the intelligence of the proclamation of a Constitutional Government at Naples. This has given a tinge of picturesque and descriptive imagery to the introductory Epodes which depicture these scenes, and some of the majestic feelings permanently connected with the scene of this animating event. --Author's Note. † Pompeii. Didst thou not start to hear Spain's thrilling pean Which paves the desert streets of Venice laughs Murmuring, where is Doria? fair Milan, With iron light is dyed, The Anarchs of the North lead forth their legions Blotting the glowing footsteps of old glory, hoary With fire-from their red feet the streams run gory! *Ææa, the Island of Circe. EPODE IL. β. Great Spirit, deepest Love! Which rulest and dost move All things which live and are, within the Italian shore, Who spreadest heaven around it, Who sittest in thy star, o'er Ocean's western floor, Or, with thine harmonizing ardors fill Would not more swiftly flee September, 1820. THE CLOUD. I BRING fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, From the seas and the streams; I bear light shades for the leaves when laid In their noonday dreams. As she dances about the sun. I sift the snow on the mountains below, In a cavern under is fetter'd the thunder, † The viper was the armorial device of the Visconti, And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile, tyrants of Milan. Whilst he is dissolving in rains. The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes, When the morning-star shines dead. As on the jag of a mountain crag, An eagle alit one moment may sit In the light of its golden wings. And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea be neath, Its ardors of rest and of love, And the crimson pall of eve may fall From the depth of heaven above, With wings folded I rest, on mine airy nest, As still as a brooding dove. That orbed maiden, with white fire laden, May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof, And I laugh to see them whirl and flee, I bind the sun's throne with a burning zone, From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape, Over a torrent sea, Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof, The mountains its columns be. The triumphal arch through which I march With hurricane, fire, and snow, Till the world is wrought When the powers of the air are chain'd to my chair, To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not: Is the million-color'd bow; The sphere-fire above its soft colors wove, While the moist earth was laughing below. I am the daughter of earth and water, And the nursling of the sky; I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die. For after the rain, when with never a stain, The pavilion of heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams, Build up the blue dome of air, I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again. TO A SKYLARK. HAIL to thee, blithe spirit! In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. Yet if we could scorn Hate, and pride, and fear; If we were things born Poets are on this cold earth, In a cave beneath the sea. Yet dare not stain with wealth or power With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon Of human thought or form, where art thou gone Why dost thou pass away and leave our state, I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate? Better than all measures Of delightful sound, Better than all treasures That in books are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground! Teach me half the gladness That thy brain must know, Such harmonious madness From my lips would flow, Ask why the sunlight not for ever Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain river; Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown, Why fear and dream and death and birth Cast on the daylight of this earth Such gloom, why man has such a scope For love and hate, despondency and hope? No voice from some sublimer world hath ever To sage or poet these responses given: Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven. The world should listen then, as I am listening now. Remain the records of their vain endeavor: AN EXHORTATION. CHAMELEONS feed on light and air; Suiting it to every ray Frail spells, whose utter'd charm might not avail to sever, From all we hear and all we see, Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds, depart |