I sailed where ever flows Of the dead kings of Melody.* There streamed a sunlit vapour, like the standard Whilst from all the coast, Louder and louder, gathering round, there wandered They seize me-I must speak them;-be they fate! STROPHE a. 1. NAPLES! thou Heart of men, which ever pantest The mutinous air and sea! they round thee, even 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, STROPHE B. 2. Thou youngest giant birth, Which from the groaning earth Leap'st, clothed in armour of impenetrable scale ! Last of the Intercessors Who 'gainst the Crowned Transgressors Pleadest before God's love! Arrayed in Wisdom's mail, Wave thy lightning lance in mirth; Nor let thy high heart fail, Though from their hundred gates the leagued Oppressors, With hurried legions move! Hail, hail, all hail ! ANTISTROPHE α. What though Cimmerian Anarchs dare blaspheme * Homer and Virgil. NN To turn his hungry sword upon the wearer; A new Acteon's error Shall theirs have been-devoured by their own hounds! Killing thy foe with unapparent wounds! ANTISTROPHE 6. 2. From Freedom's form divine, From Nature's inmost shrine, Strip every impious gawd, rend error veil by veil : O'er Falsehood's fallen state, Sit thou sublime, unawed; be the Destroyer pale! And winged words let sail, Freighted with truth even from the throne of God ANTISTROPHE α. y. Didst thou not start to hear Spain's thrilling paan Starts to hear thine! The Sea Which paves the desert streets of Venice, laughs The viper's + palsying venom, lifts her heel ANTISTROPHE S. y. Florence! beneath the sun, Of cities fairest one, Blushes within her bower for Freedom's expectation : From eyes of quenchless hope Rome tears the priestly cope, As ruling once by power, so now by admiration,- From a remoter station Exa, the Island of Circe. The viper was the armorial device of the Visconti, tyrants of Milan. For the high prize lost on Philippi's shore :- Hear ye the march as of the Earth-born Forms Of crags and thunder-clouds? See ye the banners blazoned to the day, The Serene Heaven which wraps our Eden wide The Anarchs of the North lead forth their legions An hundred tribes nourished on strange religions Famished wolves that bide no waiting, 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! All things which live and are, within the Italian shore; Whose woods, rocks, waves, surround it; Who sittest in thy star, o'er Ocean's western floor, O bid those beams be each a blinding brand Bid thy bright Heaven above Whilst light and darkness bound it. Be their tomb who planned To make it ours and thine ! Or, with thine harmonising ardours fill And raise thy sons, as o'er the prone horizon Be man's high hope and unextinct desire The instrument to work thy will divine! Then clouds from sunbeams, antelopes from leopards And frowns and fears from Thee, Than Celtic wolves from the Ausonian shepherds.- SUMMER AND WINTER. It was a bright and cheerful afternoon, All things rejoiced beneath the sun, the weeds, The willow leaves that glanced in the light breeze, And the firm foliage of the larger trees. It was a winter such as when birds die LINES TO A REVIEWER. ALAS! good friend, what profit can you see AUTUMN: A DIRGE. THE warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing, On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead, Come, months, come away, From November to May, Of the dead cold year, And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre. The chill rain is falling, the nipt worm is crawling, For the year; The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone Come, months, come away; Of the dead cold year, And make her grave green with tear on tear. THE WORLD'S WANDERERS. TELL me, thou star, whose wings of light Tell me, moon, thou pale and grey Weary wind, who wanderest |