II.

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,

III.

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.

IV.

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 Egean

main

V.

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-zoned winds, each head

Within its cloudy wings with sunfire 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.

VI.

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.

VII.

Then Rome was, and from thy deep bosom fairest,
Like a wolf-cub from a Cadmæan 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 Atilius 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.

VIII.

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 love which man had dared unlearn

* See the Baccha of Euripides.

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.

IX.

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.

X.

Thou huntress swifter than the Moon! thou terror
Of the world's wolves! thou bearer of the quiver,
Whose sunlike shafts pierce tempest-winged 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
Beyoud whose night he saw, with a dejected mien.

XI.

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
Answered Pity from her cave;

Death grew pale within the grave,
And Desolation howled to the destroyer, Save!
When like heaven's sun girt by the exhalation
Of its own glorious light, thou didst arise,
Chasing thy foes from nation unto nation

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,
In ominous eclipse? a thousand years
Bred from the slime of deep oppression's den,
Dyed all thy liquid light with blood and tears,
Till thy sweet stars could weep the stain away;
How like Bacchanals of blood

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 bewildered powers

Rose: armies mingled in obscure array,

Like clouds with clouds, darkening the sacred bowers

Of serene heaven. He, by the past pursued,

Rests with those dead, but unforgotten hours,

Whose ghosts scare victor kings in their ancestral towers.

XIII.

England yet sleeps: was she not called of old?

Spain calls her now, as with its thrilling thunder Vesuvius wakens Etna, and the cold

Snow-crags by its reply are cloven in sunder: O'er the lit waves every Eolian isle

From Pithecusa to Pelorus

Howls, and leaps, and glares in chorus:

They cry, Be dim! ye lamps of heaven suspended o'er us.
Her chains are threads of gold, she need but smile
And they dissolve; but Spain's were links of steel,
Till bit to dust by virtue's keenest file.

Twins of a single destiny! appeal

To the eternal years enthroned before us,

In the dim West, impress us from a seal,

All ye have thought and done! Time cannot dare conceal

XIV.

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;

Thy victory shall be his epitaph,

Wild Bacchanal of truth's mysterious wine,
King-deluded Germany,

His dead spirit lives in thee.

Why do we fear or hope? thou art already free!
And thou, lost Paradise of this divine

And glorious world! thou flowery wilderness!

Thou island of eternity! thou shrine

Where desolation clothed with loveliness,

Worships the thing thou wert! O Italy,

Gather thy blood into thy heart; repress

The beasts who make their dens thy sacred palaces

XV.

O, that the free would stamp the impious name into the dust! or write it there,

Of

So that this blot upon the page of fame

Were as a serpent's path, which the light air

Erases, and the flat sands close behind!

Ye the oracle have heard:

Lift the victory-flashing sword,

And cut the snaky knots of this foul gordian word,
Which weak itself as stubble, yet can bind
Into a mass, irrefragably firm,

The axes and the rods which awe mankind;
The sound has poison in it, 'tis the sperm
Of what makes life foul, cankerous, and abhorred;
Disdain not thou, at thine appointed term,

To set thine armed heel on this reluctant worm.

XVI.

O, that the wise from their bright minds would kindle
Such lamps within the dome of this dim world,
That the pale name of PRIEST might shrink and dwindle
Into the hell from which it first was hurled,
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 hue
And frowns and smiles and splendours not their own,
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
Can be between the cradle and the grave
Crowned him the King of Life.

O vain endeavour!

If on his own high will a willing slave,
He has enthroned the oppression and the oppressor.
What if earth can clothe and feed

Amplest millions at their need,

And power in thought be as the tree within the seed?
O, what if Art, an ardent intercessor,

Driving on fiery wings to Nature's throne,
Checks the great mother stooping to caress her,
And cries: Give me, thy child, dominion

Over all height and depth? if Life can breed

New wants, and wealth from those who toil and groan Rend of thy gifts and hers a thousand fold for one.

XVIII.

Come Thou, but lead out of the inmost cave
Of man's deep spirit, as the morning-star
Beckons the Sun from the Eoan wave,
Wisdom. I hear the pennons of her car
Self-moving, like cloud charioted by flame;
Comes she not, and come ye not,
Rulers of eternal thought,

To judge, with solemn truth, life's ill-apportioned lot?
Blind Love, and equal Justice, and the Fame