Imatges de pàgina
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LINES WRITTEN FOR MISS SOPHIA STACEY.

1. THOU art fair, and few are fairer

Of the nymphs of earth or ocean.
They are robes that fit the wearer-

Those soft limbs of thine, whose motion
Ever falls and shifts and glances,

As the life within them dances.

2. Thy deep eyes, a double planet,
Gaze the wisest into madness

With soft clear fire. The winds that fan it
Are those thoughts of gentle gladness
Which, like zephyrs on the billow,
Make thy gentle soul their pillow.

3. If whatever face thou paintest

In those eyes grows pale with pleasure.
If the fainting soul is faintest

When it hears thy harp's wild measure,
Wonder not that, when thou speakest,
Of the weak my heart is weakest.

4. As dew beneath the wind of morning,
As the sea which whirlwinds waken,
As the birds at thunder's warning,
As aught mute but deeply shaken,
As one who feels an unseen spirit,
Is my heart when thine is near it.
Via Val Fonda, Florence.

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LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY.

THE fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;

Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one another's being mingle-
Why not I with thine?

See, the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;

And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea ;-
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?

January 1820,

ODE TO LIBERTY.

Yet, Freedom, yet, thy banner, torn but flying,
Streams like a thunder-storm against the wind.-BYRON.

1. A GLORIOUS people vibrated again

The lightning of the nations: Liberty,

From heart to heart, from tower to tower, o'er Spain,
Scattering contagious fire into the sky,

T

Gleamed. My soul spurned the chains of its dismay,
And in the rapid plumes of song
Clothed itself, sublime and strong,—

As a young eagle soars the morning clouds among,
Hovering inverse o'er its accustomed prey :
Till from its station in the heaven of Fame
The Spirit's whirlwind rapt it; and the ray
Of the remotest sphere of living flame
Which paves the void was from behind it flung,

As foam from a ship's swiftness, when there came
A voice out of the deep; I will record the same.
2. "The sun and the serenest moon sprang forth;
The burning stars of the abyss were hurled
Into the depths of heaven; the dædal earth,
That island in the ocean of the world,
Hung in its cloud of all-sustaining air.
But this divinest universe

Was yet a chaos and a curse,

For Thou wert not: but, power from worst producing worse, The spirit of the beasts was kindled there,

And of the birds, and of the watery forms,And there was war among them, and despair Within them, raging without truce or terms. The bosom of their violated nurse

Groaned, for beasts warred on beasts, and worms on worms, And men on men; each heart was as a hell of storms.

3. "Man, the imperial shape, then multiplied

His generations under the pavilion

Of the sun's throne: palace and pyramid,

Temple and prison, to many a swarming million Were as to mountain-wolves their ragged caves. This human living multitude

Was savage, cunning, blind, and rude, —
For Thou wert not; but o'er the populous solitude.
Like one fierce cloud over a waste of waves,
Hung Tyranny; beneath sate deified

The Sister-pest, congregator of slaves !
Into the shadow of her pinions wide.

Anarchs and priests, who feed on gold and blood
Till with the stain their inmost souls are dyed,
Drove the astonished herds of men from every side.
4. "The nodding promontories and blue isles

And cloud-like mountains and dividuous waves
Of Greece basked glorious in the open smiles
Of favouring heaven: from their enchanted caves
Prophetic echoes flung dim melody

On the unapprehensive wild.

The vine, the corn, the olive mild, Grew, savage yet, to human use unreconciled And, like unfolded flowers beneath the sea,

;

Like the man's thought dark in the infant's brain, Like aught that is which wraps what is to be,

Art's deathless dreams lay veiled by many a vein Of Parian stone: and, yet a speechless child,,

Verse murmured, and Philosophy did strain

Her lidless eyes for Thee ;—when o'er the Ægean main 5. "Athens arose a city such as vision

Builds from the purple crags and silver towers
Of battlemented cloud, as in derision

Of kingliest masonry: the ocean floors
Pave it; the evening sky pavilions it;
Its portals are inhabited

By thunder-zonèd winds, each head
Within its cloudy wings with sun-fire garlanded,
A divine work! Athens diviner yet

Gleamed with its crest of columns, on the will

Of man as on a mount of diamond set;

For Thou wert, and thine all-creative skill Peopled, with forms that mock the eternal dead In marble immortality, that hill

Which was thine earliest throne and latest oracle.

6. Within the surface of time's fleeting river

Its wrinkled image lies, as then it lay,
Immovably unquiet, and for ever

It trembles, but it cannot pass away.
The voices of thy bards and sages thunder
With an earth-awakening blast
Through the caverns of the past;
Religion veils her eyes, Oppression shrinks aghast :
A winged sound of joy and love and wonder,
Which soars where expectation never flew,
Rending the veil of space and time asunder.

One ocean feeds the clouds and streams and dew, One sun illumines heaven; one Spirit vast

With life and love makes chaos ever new ;

As Athens doth the world with thy delight renew.

7. "Then Rome was, and from thy deep bosom fairest,
Like a wolf-cub from a Cadmean Mænad,
She drew the milk of greatness, though thy dearest
From that elysian food was yet unweaned;
And many a deed of terrible uprightness

By thy sweet love was sanctified;
And in thy smile and by thy side
Saintly Camillus lived, and firm Attilius died.
But, when tears stained thy robe of vestal whiteness.
And gold profaned thy capitolian throne,
Thou didst desert, with spirit-winged lightness,
The senate of the tyrants: they sunk prone,
Slaves of one tyrant. Palatinus sighed
Faint echoes of Ionian song; that tone

Thou didst delay to hear, lamenting to disown.

8. "From what Hyrcanian glen or frozen hill, Or piny promontory of the Arctic main,

Or utmost islet inaccessible,

Didst thou lament the ruin of thy reign,

Teaching the woods and waves, and desert rocks,
And every Naiad's ice-cold urn,

To talk in echoes sad and stern

Of that sublimest lore which man had dared unlearn?
For neither didst thou watch the wizard flocks

Of the Scald's dreams, nor haunt the Druid's sleep.
What if the tears rained through thy shattered locks
Were quickly dried? for thou didst groan, not weep,
When from its sea of death, to kill and burn,

The Galilean serpent forth did creep,

And made thy world an undistinguishable heap.
9. "A thousand years the Earth cried 'Where art thou?'
And then the shadow of thy coming fell
On Saxon Alfred's olive-cinctured brow:
And many a warrior-peopled citadel,
Like rocks which fire lifts out of the flat deep,
Arose in sacred Italy,

Frowning o'er the tempestuous sea

Of kings and priests and slaves, in tower-crowned majesty.
That multitudinous anarchy did sweep

And burst around their walls like idle foam,
Whilst from the human spirit's deepest deep
Strange melody with love and awe struck dumb
Dissonant arms; and Art, which cannot die,

With divine wand traced on our earthly home
Fit imagery to pave heaven's everlasting dome.
10. "Thou Huntress swifter than the Moon! thou terror
Of the world's wolves! thou bearer of the quiver
Whose sunlike shafts pierce tempest-wingèd Error,
As light may pierce the clouds when they dissever
In the calm regions of the orient day!

Luther caught thy wakening glance:

Like lightning from his leaden lance
Reflected, it dissolved the visions of the trance
In which, as in a tomb, the nations lay;

And England's prophets hailed thee as their queen,
In songs whose music cannot pass away.
Though it must flow for ever.

Not unseen,

Before the spirit-sighted countenance

Of Milton, didst thou pass from the sad scene
Beyond whose night he saw, with a dejected mien.
II. "The eager Hours and unreluctant Years
As on a dawn-illumined mountain stood,
Trampling to silence their loud hopes and fears,
Darkening each other with their multitude,-
And cried aloud 'Liberty!' Indignation

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