And other such lady-like luxuries,

Feasting on which we will philosophize!

And we 'll have fires out of the Grand Duke's wood,
To thaw the six weeks' winter in our blood.

And then we 'll talk ;- what shall we talk about?

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Oh! there are themes enough for many a bout
Of thought-entangled descant ; as to nerves
With cones and parallelograms and curves
I've sworn to strangle them if once they dare
To bother me when you are with me there.
And they shall never more sip laudanum,
From Helicon or Himeros ; well, come;
And, in despite of God and of the devil,

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We'll make our friendly philosophic revel

Outlast the leafless time; till buds and flowers
Warn the obscure inevitable hours,

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Sweet meeting by sad parting to renew ;-
"To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new."

ODE TO NAPLES.

EPODE I. a.

I STOOD within the city disinterred,

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 oracular thunder penetrating shook

The listening soul in my suspended blood;

I felt that Earth out of her deep heart spoke —

I felt, but heard not:-through white columns glowed

The isle-sustaining Ocean-flood,

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IO

A plane of light between two Heavens of azure :

Around me gleamed many a bright sepulchre
Of whose pure beauty, Time, as if his pleasure
Were to spare Death, had never made erasure;
But every living lineament was clear
As in the sculptor's thought; and there
The wreaths of stony myrtle, ivy and pine,
Like winter leaves o'ergrown by moulded snow,
Seemed only not to move and grow
Because the crystal silence of the air

Weighed on their life; even as the Power divine
Which then lulled all things, brooded upon mine.

:

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EPODE II. a.

Then gentle winds arose

With many a mingled close

Of wild Æolian sound and mountain-odour keen;
And where the Baian ocean

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Welters with air-like motion,

Within, above, around its bowers of starry green,
Moving the sea-flowers in those purple caves
Even as the ever stormless atmosphere

Floats o'er the Elysian realm,

It bore me like an Angel, o'er the waves

Of sunlight, whose swift pinnace of dewy air

No storm can overwhelm;

I sailed, where ever flows

Under the calm Serene

A spirit of deep emotion.
From the unknown graves

Of the dead kings of Melody.

Shadowy Aornos darkened o'er the helm
The horizontal æther; heaven stripped bare
Its depths over Elysium, where the prow

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Made the invisible water white as snow;

From that Typhæan mount, Inarime,

There streamed a sunlight vapour, like the standard 45 Of some ætherial host;

Whilst from all the coast,

Louder and louder, gathering round, there wandered Over the oracular woods and divine sea

Prophesyings which grew articulate

They seize me - I must speak them
- I must speak them - be they fate!

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STROPHE α. I.

Naples! thou Heart of men which ever pantest

Naked, beneath the lidless eye of heaven!

Elysian City which to calm enchantest

The mutinous air and sea: they round thee, even
As sleep round Love, are driven !

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Metropolis of a ruined Paradise

Long lost, late won, and yet but half regained!

Bright Altar of the bloodless sacrifice,

Which armèd Victory offers up unstained

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To Love, the flower-enchained!

Thou which wert once, and then didst cease to be,

Now art, and henceforth ever shalt be, free,

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If Hope, and Truth, and Justice can avail,
Hail, hail, all hail!

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,

Uor M

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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
Freedom and thee? thy shield is as a mirror

To make their blind slaves see, and with fierce gleam
To turn his hungry sword upon the wearer;

A new Acteon's error

Shall 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 grow,
And slaves more feeble, gazing on their foe;
If Hope and Truth and Justice may avail,
Thou shalt be great. All hail !

ANTISTROPHE ß. 2.

From Freedom's form divine,

From Nature's inmost shrine,

Strip every impious gawd, rend Error veil by veil :

O'er Ruin desolate,

O'er Falsehood's fallen state,

Sit thou sublime, unawed; be the Destroyer pale!

And equal laws be thine,

And winged words let sail,

Freighted with truth even from the throne of God:

That wealth, surviving fate,

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ANTISTROPHE α. y.

Didst thou not start to hear Spain's thrilling pæan
From land to land re-echoed solemnly,

Till silence became music? From the Ææan

To the cold Alps, eternal Italy

Starts to hear thine! The Sea

Which paves the desert streets of Venice laughs
In light and music; widowed Genoa wan
By moonlight spells ancestral epitaphs,
Murmuring, where is Doria? fair Milan,
Within whose veins long ran

The viper's palsying venom, lifts her heel
To bruise his head. The signal and the seal
(If Hope and Truth and Justice can avail)
Art Thou of all these hopes.—O hail !

ANTISTROPHE 6. 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,

As athlete stripped to run

From a remoter station

For the high prize lost on Philippi's shore :-
As then Hope, Truth, and Justice did avail,

So now may Fraud and Wrong! O hail!

EPODE I. ß.

Hear ye the march as of the Earth-born Forms
Arrayed against the ever-living Gods?

The crash and darkness of a thousand storms

Bursting their inaccessible abodes.

Of crags and thunder-clouds?