THE EARTH.

And the weak day weeps
That it should be so.

Oh, gentle Moon, the voice of thy delight
Falls on me like thy clear and tender light
Soothing the seaman, borne the summer night,
Through isles for ever calm;

495

Oh, gentle Moon, thy crystal accents pierce
The caverns of my pride's deep universe,

500

Charming the tiger joy, whose tramplings fierce
Made wounds which need thy balm.

PANTHEA.

I rise as from a bath of sparkling water,
A bath of azure light, among dark rocks,
Out of the stream of sound.

The stream of sound has ebbed away from us,

And you pretend to rise out of its wave,

Because your words fall like the clear, soft dew

Shaken from a bathing wood-nymph's limbs and hair.

PANTHEA.

Peace! peace! A mighty Power, which is as darkness,
Is rising out of Earth, and from the sky
Is showered like night, and from within the air
Bursts, like eclipse which had been gathered up
Into the pores of sunlight: the bright visions,
Wherein the singing spirits rode and shone,
Gleam like pale meteors through a watery night.

510

515

IONE.

There is a sense of words upon mine ear.

PANTHEA.

An universal sound like words: Oh, list!

DEMOGORGON.

Thou, Earth, calm empire of a happy soul,
Sphere of divinest shapes and harmonies,

Beautiful orb! gathering as thou dost roll

The love which paves thy path along the skies:

THE EARTH.

I hear: I am as a drop of dew that dies.

DEMOGORGON.

Thou, Moon, which gazest on the nightly Earth

With wonder, as it gazes upon thee;

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525

Whilst each to men, and beasts, and the swift birth

Of birds, is beauty, love, calm, harmony:

THE MOON.

I hear: I am a leaf shaken by thee!

DEMOGORGON.

Ye kings of suns and stars, Dæmons and Gods,
Ætherial Dominations, who possess

Elysian, windless, fortunate abodes

Beyond Heaven's constellated wilderness:

A VOICE from above.

Our great Republic hears, we are bless'd, and bless.

530

DEMOGORGON.

Ye happy dead, whom beams of brightest verse
Are clouds to hide, not colours to portray,
Whether your nature is that universe

Which once ye saw and suffered

A VOICE from beneath.

Or as they

Whom we have left, we change and pass away.

DEMOGORGON.

Ye elemental Genii, who have homes

From man's high mind even to the central stone Of sullen lead; from Heaven's star-fretted domes To the dull weed some sea-worm battens on:

A CONFUSED Voice.

We hear thy words waken Oblivion.

DEMOGORGON.

Spirits, whose homes are flesh ye beasts and birds,
Ye worms, and fish; ye living leaves and buds;
Lightning and wind; and ye untameable herds,
Meteors and mists, which throng air's solitudes:

A VOICE.

Thy voice to us is wind among still woods.

DEMOGORGON.

Man, who wert once a despot and a slave;

A dupe and a deceiver; a decay;

A traveller from the cradle to the grave

Through the dim night of this immortal day:

535

540

545

550

ALL.

Speak: thy strong words may never pass away.

DEMOGORGON.

This is the day, which down the void abysm

At the Earth-born's spell yawns for Heaven's despotism, 555
And Conquest is dragged captive through the deep :
Love, from its awful throne of patient power
In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour

Of dead endurance, from the slippery, steep,
And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs
And folds over the world its healing wings.

Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance,
These are the seals of that most firm assurance

560

Which bars the pit over Destruction's strength; And if, with infirm hand, Eternity,

565

Mother of many acts and hours, should free

The serpent that would clasp her with his length; These are the spells by which to re-assume

An empire o'er the disentangled doom.

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;

570

To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;

Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be

Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.

575

SONNET: ENGLAND IN 1819.

AN old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow

Through public scorn, mud from a muddy spring, -
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,

But leech-like to their fainting country cling,

Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow, -
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,
An army, which liberticide and prey

Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield:
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless - a book sealed;
A Senate, Time's worst statute unrepealed, –
Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.

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1Ο

SONG TO THE MEN OF ENGLAND.

I.

MEN of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low?
Wherefore weave with toil and care
The rich robes your tyrants wear?

II.

Wherefore feed, and clothe, and save,
From the cradle to the grave,

Those ungrateful drones who would

Drain your sweat - nay, drink your blood?

1819.

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