The Poetical Works of the Rev. George Croly :: :: University of Virginia Library

“Nulla quies intus. . . . .
Nec tamen est clamor, sed parvæ murmura vocis.
Atria turba tenet, veniunt leve vulgus, euntque,
E quibus hi vacuas implent sermonibus auras,
Hi narrata ferunt alio, mensuraque ficti
Crescit, et auditis aliquid novus adjicit auctor.”
OVID. METAM. XII.

xvii

“I had a thing to say.—But let it go:
The sun is in the heaven, and the proud day,
Attended with the pleasures of the world,
Is all too wanton, and too full of gauds,
To give me audience:—If the midnight bell
Did, with his iron tongue and brazen mouth,
Sound one unto the drowsy race of night;
Or if that thou could'st see me without eyes,
Hear me without thine ears, and make reply
Without a tongue, using conceit alone,
Without ears, eyes, or harmful sound of words;
Then, in despite of brooded, watchful day,
I would into thy bosom pour my thoughts.”
KING JOHN.

I.

Welcome, thou glorious dawn! Oh! who would cling
To sleep, and sleep's bewildered fantasies;
When he might see the rushing of thy wing,
Spreading like clouds from some high sacrifice;
And hear thy trumpet bid the world arise.
While the wan morn-star, in her watch-tower gray,
Extinguishes her little lamp and flies.
But lo! the east is all one golden ray,
And on his burning wheels out rolls the king of day

II.

Lovely—but lovelier still, when that bright morn
Unfolds the vision of some first-seen land;
And, as the twilight clouds are upwards borne,
Foreign the hills, the vales, the streams expand;
Charming the wanderer's foot suspense to stand,
As, like a young creation, round him rise
Its thousand shapes of soft, and bright, and grand;
All strange, all spell-touch'd; ev'n the wild wind's sighs,
The peasant's call, to him, romantic melodies!

III.

Yet who can feel it like the luckless wight,
In France's lumbering wains through midnight pent,
With heavy lids that will not slumber quite,
Stiff limbs and beating brow, and spirit spent;
When on the eastern hill's slow-gain'd ascent,
The breeze first meets him from its bowers below,
Streaming cool odours, living element;
And his clear'd eye sees mount and forest glow;
And the whole landscape lights its whole enchanted show.

IV.

'Tis dawn upon Mont Martre! O'er the plain,
In flake and spire, the sunbeam plunges deep,
Bringing out shape, and shade, and summer-stain;
Like a retiring host the blue mists sweep.
Looms on the farthest right Valerien's steep,
Crown'd with its convent kindling in the day;
And swiftly sparkling from their bowery sleep,
Like matin stars, around the horizon play
Far village vanes, and domes and castle-turrets gray.

V.

'Tis a rich scene; and yet the richest charm
That e'er cloth'd earth in beauty, lives not here.
Winds no green fence around the cultured farm;
No blossom'd hawthorn shields the cottage dear.
The land is bright, and yet to thine how drear,
Unrivall'd England!—Well the thought may pine
For those sweet fields where each, a little sphere,
In shaded, sacred fruitfulness doth shine,
And the heart higher beats that says, “This spot is mine.”

VI.

St. Cloud! How stately from the green hill's side
Shoots up thy Parian pile! His transient hold,
Who wore the iron crown of regicide!
He treads its halls no more—his hour is told.
The circle widens; Sevres bright and cold
Peeps out in vestal beauty from her throne,
Spared for Minerva's sake, when round her roll'd
From yon high brow the Invader's fiery zone,
Resistless, as can tell thy faded tow'rs, Meudon!

VII.

A trumpet!—at the sound Mont Martre's spread
With martial crowds, a glittering, crimson tide,
Pouring incessant from its sunbright head.
Part, that in splendour deepen down its side,
In square, and line, and column wheeling wide
To many a solemn touch of harmony.
Part to the far champaign that clanging ride,
Like eagles darting from their aëry high,
Like the rich-flashing lights of autumn's evening sky.

VIII.

The British bands! A power is in the sound,
It speaks of freedom, valour, virtue nigh;
It calls up England upon foreign ground!
Far be from us the false philosophy
That owns not country's nobly-partial tie!
The thoughts that like a second nature come
In distance and in death to fix the eye
On the heart's classic soil;—by temple, tomb,
By all love's names endear'd,—by all in one, our Home.

IX.

War has its mighty moments:—Heart of Man!
Have all thy pulses vigour for a thrill
Prouder than through those gallant bosoms ran
When first their standards waved above that hill?
When first they strove their downward gaze to fill
With the full grandeur of their glorious prize—
Paris! the name that from their cradle still
Stung them in dreams; now, glittering in their eyes,
Now won—won by the Victory of Victories!

X.

For this had bled their battle round the world;
For this they round the world had come to war;
Some with the shatter'd ensign that unfurl'd
Its lion-emblems to the Orient star;
And some, the blue Atlantic stemming far;
And some, a matchless band, from swarthy Spain—
With well-worn steel, and breasts of many a scar;
And all their plains to their last conquering plain
Were sport, their trophies all to this proud trophy vain.

XI.

Lovely the stranger's land—the tawny meads,
Track'd by the sleepy Seine's meanders blue;
The vintage ripening on its sloping beds,
Like sheets of emeralds, dropping purple dew;
The forest belting with its waste of yew
The chateau, lonely as the exile's tomb
Where rests its lord; the hill's exotic hue;
The umbraged roads, that from th'horizon come,
Like arrows, to one point, where still broods morning's gloom.

XII.

There sleep'st thou, Paris! What profounder sleep
Were thine, had matchless hearts not sieged thee round!
When those who sow'd in blood, in blood should reap,
When the bold hunters from earth's farthest bound
At length the tiger in his cavern found;
Then, not yon cloud that wraps thy giddy dream,
But the red vapour of the bloody ground,
Such as o'er Moscow hung, had caught the gleam;
The midnight fires of death, thy last, wild, waking beam.

XIII.

The gale has come,—at once the fleecy haze
Floats up,—then stands a purple canopy,
Shading th'imperial city from the blaze.
Glorious the vision! tower and temple lie
Beneath the morn, like waves of ivory,
With many an azure streak and gush of green,
As grove and garden on the dazzled eye
Rise in successive beauty, and between
Flows into sudden light the long, slow, serpent Seine.

XIV.

For Paris now.—Now farewell hill and vale,
And silence sweet, fresh blooms, and dewy sky!
Farewell the gentle moral of the gale,
The wisdom written in the rose's dye!
I go to meet the wizard city's eye,
That puts on splendour but to dim the soul.
A thousand years of crime beneath me lie!
One glance!—I stand as on a mighty mole,
Around whose base not waves, but evil ages roll.

XV.

And ye enduring monuments that rise,
In your calm grandeur, round this fortress-hill,
Masses of solemn shade and orient dyes!
Are ye not each, as in that sea an isle,
Sheltering the few and statelier memories, while
The feeble pass like foam upon the wave?
I gaze not here on Greek or Gothic pile!—
I see but emblems of the days that gave
An impulse to the world, to empires throne or grave.

XVI.

'Twas a dark time, that on Valerien's brow
Rear'd the sad refuge of that convent tower!
There mind was buried, wither'd beauty's glow,
There passion lost its hope, but not its power;
Yet good was mix'd with ill; its midnight hour
Heard prayers from haughty lips that then first pray'd;
And woman who had wept her loveliest dower,
There hid her broken heart in calm and shade,
And turned her to His fold, who sought the lamb that stray'd!

XVII.

Earth had a burst of madness; come, and gone,
Like lightning from its cloud—a withering blaze.
There stand its lonely halls, its Pantheon;
Then were those halls not lonely;—nights and days
Roll'd o'er their thousands, pouring heaven's high praise,
From more than pagan lips, to harlotry.
Temple of many gods! while One delays
For wisdom deeply veil'd from human eye,
To strike it into dust, till ev'n its memory die.

XVIII.

The emblem-circle's wound. The sunbeams flow
Latest, yet loveliest, on St. Denis' wall.
But is there not a brighter sun than now
Vestures in gold that patriarch cathedral?
Is not earth's veil at length about to fall,
As the slow shadows from that temple hoar;
And the true faith unfold her gates to all;
And man be glorious as he was before;
And earth be Paradise, till time shall be no more?

XIX.

The hour shall come!—It is no mystic's trance,
But true as He, who wills, and it is done!
The hour shall come,—is come!—Our feeble glance
Ev'n now sees stooping from its clouds the throne
Where One shall rule o'er earth—The Mighty One.
Its kings his hallow'd viceroys—man's old stain
Fast brightening from the spirit;—war unknown;—
Till Death has died! and, rushing from his chain,
To heaven th'immortals rise, with angel plume and strain.

XX.

Now, from the Mount!—Through solid dust we sweep,
Chok'd, crushing, struggling to wile back our sleep.
The barrier's reach'd—out rolls the drowsy guard;
A scowl—a question—and the gate's unbarr'd.
And this is Paris! The postillion's thong
Rings round a desert, as we bound along,
Onward, still darker, doubly desolate,
Winds o'er the shrinking head the dangerous strait.
The light is lost; in vain we peer our way
Through the rank dimness of the Fauxbourg day;
In vain the wearied eyeball strains to scale
That squalid height, half hovel and half jail:
At every step the struggling vision bar
Projections sudden, black, and angular,
Streak'd with what once was gore, deep rent with shot,
Marks of some conflict furious and—forgot!
At every step, from sewer and alley sail
The crossing steams that make the senses quail,
Defying breeze's breath and summer's glow,
Charter'd to hold eternal mire below.

Grim loneliness!—and yet some blasted form
Will start upon the sight, a human worm,
Clung to the chapel's wall—the lank throat bare,
The glance shot woeful from the tangled hair,
The fleshless, outstretch'd arm, and ghastly cry,
Half forcing, half repelling charity.
Or, from the portal of the old hotel,
Gleams on his post the victor-centinel,
Briton or German, shooting round his ken,
From its dark depth, a lion from his den.

Tis light and air again: and lo! the Seine,
The Frenchman's boast, yon lazy, livid drain!
With bridges, shaking to the foot, o'erlaid,
Booths for its barges, painted trees its shade.
Yet here are living beings, and the soil
Breeds its old growth of ribaldry and broil.
A whirl of mire, the dingy cabriolet
Makes the quick transit through the crowded way;
On spurs the courier, creaks the crazy wain,
Dragg'd through its central mud by might and main,

Around our way-laid wheels the paupers crowd,
With every vileness of man's nature bow'd.
The whole a mass of folly, woe, and strife,
Of heated, rank, corrupting, reptile life:
And, endless as their ouzy tide, the throng
Roll on with endless clamour, curse, and song.

Fit for such tenants, low'r on either side
The hovels where the gang less live than hide;
Story on story, savage stone on stone,
Time-shatter'd, tempest-stain'd, less built than thrown.
Sole empress of the portal, in full blow,
The rouged grisette lays out her trade below,
Ev'n in her rags a thing of wit and wile,
Eye, hand, lip, tongue, all point, and press, and smile.
Close by, in patch and print, the pedlar's stall
Flutters its looser glories up the wall.
Spot of corruption! where the rabble rude
Loiter round tinsel tomes, and figures nude;
Voltaire, and Laïs, long alternate eyed,
Till both the leper's soul and sous divide.

Above, 'tis desert, save where sight is scar'd
With the wild visage through the casement barr'd.

But, venture on the darkness; and within
See the stern haunt of wretchedness and sin.
The door unhinged, for winter's bitterest air,
The paper pane, the gapp'd and shaking stair,
Winding in murkiness, as to the sty
Of guilt forlorn, or base debauchery;
The chamber, tatter'd, melancholy, old,
Yet large—where plunder might its midnights hold;
And in its foulest corner, from the day
Sullen and shrunk, its lord, the Federé.
Meagre the form, the visage swart and spare,
Furrow'd with early vice and desperate care;
Hollow the cheek, the eye ferocious guile,
Yet gentle to his hard, habitual smile.
His end on earth, to live the doubtful day,
And glean the livre for the Sunday's play.
Heavy that chamber's air; the sunbeams fall
Scatter'd and sickly on the naked wall;

Through the time-crusted casement scarcely shown
The rafter'd roof, the floor of chilling stone,
The crazy bed, the mirror that betrays
Frameless, where vanity yet loves to gaze;
And still, the symbols of his darker trade,
The musquet, robber-pistol, sabre blade,
Hung rusting, where around the scanty fire
His squalid offspring watch its brands expire.
His glance is there;—another, statelier spot
Has full possession of his fever'd thought;
In the fierce past the fierce to-come he sees,
The day return'd of plunder'd palaces,
When faction revell'd, mobs kept thrones in awe,
And the red pike at once was king and law.

XXI.

Yet, contrast strange! beside that dismal cell
Tow'rs on the eye the Seigneur's proud hotel.
Repelling too, no waste of outward state
Here told th'exclusive pleasures of the great;

Yet, in those bounds, the cup of luxury
Was brimm'd as rich as e'er made midnight fly.
Beauty and pomp were in its festal hall,
Gay valour, courtly wit, youth, passion, all.
Sight of enchantment,—down its vista's blaze
Of gold and jewel-vestured forms to gaze!
One buoyant, brilliant dance of tress and plume
Gleaming o'er eyes of light, and cheeks of bloom.
Nor lovely less, to turn, where through the shade
Faint from the glow, the groupes of beauty stray'd;
The suite of silent, stately chambers past,
In each the distant radiance feebler cast;
In each the concert's sweetness softer sent;
Till on the burning cheek, new element,
New life was breathed in night's delicious air,
Streaming from violet bank and rose parterre.
Heart-swelling hour! On her profoundest sky
In glory throned, the moon's lone majesty;
From that huge, slumbering city sent no sound;
Above, all brightness; soul-felt silence, round!

Save where, as sudden opes the distant hall,
Faint as its light, the tones in sweetness fall,
A breath of harp and flute, a silver sigh,
A wild, swift touch, of fairy harmony;
Save where the fountain murmuring in its shell
With the far concert's murmurs mixeth well.

But pass the porch, and all was past:—the wall,
Long, blank, surmounted by the turret tall;
The loophole, massive buttress, thund'ring gate
That shuts upon the world the court of state;
The casement dim, with bar and bolt secured,
The sculptured shield, the high roof embrazured,
Strike to the stranger's eye the sudden thrill,
And give the felon and his dungeon still.

XXII.

But pause! what pile athwart the crowded way
Frowns with such sterner aspect? The Abbaye!

Is it not curst? has not the smell of blood
Struck it for ever into solitude?
No! To the past as to the future cold,
Self and the moment all his heart can hold,
The deep damnation of the deed forgot
Before the blood was stiffen'd on the spot;
Gay in the sight, the shadow of the pile,
The meagre native plays his gambol vile;
The crack'd horn rings, the rival mimes engage,
Punch in imperial tatters sweeps the stage;
The jostling mob dance, laugh, sing, shout the rhyme,
And die in ecstacies the thousandth time.
And look! around, above, what ghastly row
Through bar and grating struggle for the show,
Down darting, head o'er head, the haggard eye,
Felons! the scarcely scaped,—the sure to die!
The dungeon'd murderer startles from his trance,
Uplist'ning hears the din, the monkey-dance,
Growls at the fate that fix'd his cell below,
And longs, before he dies,—to see the show!

Yes, 'twas the spot!—where yonder slow gendarme
Sweeps from his round the loitering pauper-swarm;
Where up the mould'ring wall that starveling vine
Drags on from nail to nail its yellow twine;
For ornament! Still something for the eye;
Prisons, nay graves, have here their foppery:—
There, primed for blood, Danton drew up his band,
The Marseillois, the Fauxbourg's black brigand.
The gate roll'd back,—as out to liberty
One bounding came,—the murderers met his eye,
He heard their laugh,—he dropp'd in desperate prayer
For life—for life!—His brain was spattered there;—
Another came—recoil'd—gave one wild wail,
And sank in gore,—the bullet stopp'd his tale.
The work went hotly on. Dark place of crime!
What hideous guilt, what suffering sublime
Were in thee,—emblem of the ruin'd land!
Frequent, amid the shoutings of the band,

Rose from within prayer, laughter!—Pass that wall
A crowd were gather'd in a lofty hall,
An ancient chapel, lingering each till came
The harrowing, certain summons of his name.
A man stood in its pulpit; one strong ray
That through the grating struggled down its way,
Fell on his upturn'd brow, and tonsure bare.
His hands were clasp'd, he prayed with mighty pray'r,—
Then bent him where the failing light below
Just glanced on shapes and visages of woe.
And there were those who felt, yet scorn'd to feel,
And smiled in ghastliness to see his zeal,
And knowing they had reach'd their dying day,
Resolv'd to think no more, and turn'd away!—
And those, who weary of the cell and chain,
Saw the last day of life the last of pain,
And, sadly flung upon the chilling floor,
Listen'd lethargic to the outward roar—
But there were those, who on him fix'd the eye,
In the deep gaze of utter agony;

Kneeling without a heave, without a groan,—
As if that hour had struck them into stone.

The shouts had died,—'twas silence,—sudden rang
A shriek throughout the prison!—All upsprang;—
Each fixing on his fellow wretch the eye,
In the broad glare of desperate sympathy;
Another miserable hour, and they
Who shudder'd there might be—but gore and clay!
The preacher bow'd his head; his hands were prest
A moment with his Bible on his breast;—
His voice a moment stopp'd:—the pang was past,
'Twas nature's terror, painful,—but her last.
His voice awoke; his spirit in him burn'd;
All eyes instinctive on the martyr turn'd.
He told them of the things that man's dull ear,
Fill'd with life's flatteries, so hates to hear;
He told them of the Christian's cross and crown,
And raised his hands to bless them;—all sank down,—
All humbly bow'd their heads to earth, all felt
At his ascending prayer their bosoms melt;

All trembled,—and strange thoughts upon them stole,
That look'd like heavenly dawnings in the soul;
And tears began down wither'd cheeks to flow,
Nor tears of joy, but far too soft for woe!
They rose;—and they who knelt upon that floor,
Were naked spirits ere that day was o'er.

Behind that chapel's altar oped a room—
Gloomy—the deeds done there were fit for gloom.
A torch, that languish'd in the heavy air,
Feebly made up the daylight's sullen glare;
It shew'd a table, soil'd with wine, and strew'd
With plunder in still deeper stains embrued;
Around it on the platform benches lay
Dark, muffled shapes that slept their drench away.
A few, in whom the past debauchery
Was squalid still, hung loose and lowering by,
And judged!—For this was a tribunal;—these,
Judges!—The basest rabble's basest lees,
These slaves of vulgar folly, guilt, and rage,
These mountebanks upon a bloody stage;

Wretches! whose aspects told of hell begun;
Their joyless joy, to see mankind undone!
And they were speedy too; no ancient saws
Check'd the bold current of the rabble's laws;
A glance—a taunt upon the victim cast,
A sign,—he pass'd away—to slaughter pass'd.

And now, a prisoner stood before them, wan
With dungeon damps and woe—an ancient man,
But stately;—there was in his hoary hair
A reverend grace that Murder's self might spare.
Two of the mob, half naked, freshly dyed
In crimson clots, waved sabres at his side.
He told his tale,—a brief, plain, prison tale,—
Well vouch'd by those faint limbs and features pale:
His words were strong, the manly energy
Of one not unprepared to live or die.
His judges wavered, whispered, seemed to feel
Some human touches at his firm appeal.—
He named his king!—a burst of scoff and sneer
Pour'd down, that even the slumberers sprang to hear;

Startled, to every grating round the room
Sprang visages already seal'd for doom;
Red from their work without, in rush'd a crowd,
Like wolves that heard the wonted cry of blood.
He gazed above,—the torch's downward flame
Flash'd o'er his cheek;—'twas red,—it might be shame,
Shame for his country, sorrow for her throne;—
'Twas pale,—the hectic of the heart was gone.
His guards were flung aside;—he tore his vest,
A ribbon'd cross was on his knightly breast,—
It covered scars;—he deigned no more reply;
None, but the scorn that lighten'd from his eye.
His huddled, hurried judges dropp'd their gaze;
The villain soul's involuntary praise!
He kiss'd his cross, and turn'd him to the door
An instant,—and they heard his murderers' roar!
'Twas shapeless carnage now; in meek despair,
Gazing on heaven, the pastor died in prayer;
The soldier met the sabre's whirl unmoved;
The matron perish'd on the corse she loved;

Yet there were dying bursts; with rush and reel,
Some 'mid the assassin ranks made desperate wheel,
Down-stricken, rising, bleeding, tottering round,
Till the ball stretch'd the struggler on the ground;
Others, the red knee clasping, sank and wept;
Alike o'er faint and bold the havoc swept.
The evening fell,—in bloody mists the sun
Rush'd glaring down; nor yet the work was done.
'Twas night; and still upon the Bandit's eye
Came from their cavern those who came to die;
A long, weak, wavering, melancholy wave,
As from the grave, returning to the grave.
'Twas midnight;—still the gusty torches blazed
On shapes of woe, dim gestures, faces glazed;
And still, as through the dusk the ghastly file
Moved onward, it was added to the pile!

Ruler of Heaven! did not the righteous groan
Rise from this spot in vengeance to thy throne!
Or did the torrent that so redly ran
Round those heaped remnants of what once was man,

That mass of cloven bone, and shatter'd limb,
And spouting brain, and visage strain'd and dim,
And horrid life still quivering in the eye,
As, choked in blood, the victim toil'd to die—
Did it sink voiceless in the thirsty ground?—
No! from that hour the iron band was bound,
No! from that hour was fixed the mighty seal
To the long woes that France was doomed to feel;
Plague, famine, in God's sterner wrath untried—
Her deeper sentence, man, the homicide!

“Elargissez, Monsieur!” was the signal for assassination by the mob in the massacres of September, 1792.

1 Chronicles, chap. 21. verse 13.

XXIII.

Perish the vision!—no,—on France's eye
Still let it hang,—as o'er a murderer's
His victim's shade,—in noon, in midnight nigh,
Till she has laid it in repentant tears;
Till man has seen what fruit rebellion bears;
The noblest sure to perish by the low,
Stripp'd by their rapine, slaughter'd by their fears;
Guilt's tender mercies, that uplift the blow,
While from its pallid lips “faith, honor, country” flow.

XXIV.

But musing's done.—The rabble round me press,
With every cry of earth since Babel's fall.
The world's in gala,—Poissarde loveliness
Glides, faint and feather'd from her last night's ball,
Dispensing glances on the friseur small,
The tiptoe thing beside her,—all bouquet;
His bowing head, a curly carnival;
His shoulders to his earrings, grimly gay;—
All have put on their smiles; 'tis the King's holiday.

XXV.

A cannon roars,—a rocket cleaves the air
In rushing beauty, waving up its way,
Like a red snake. With backward step and stare
The crowd pursue its burst,—'tis lost in day.
White banners on the palace turrets play;
And soon, like sheets of newly waken'd flame,
They rise from many a roof and steeple gray,
Thick meteors, ray'd with cross and patron name;
While in rich thunders roll the peals of Notre Dâme.

XXVI.

Below, the streets are changing; tissues trim
From door to door, from house to house are swung;
Deep with devices, shatter'd oft and dim,
For fortune's turns in loyal darkness flung.
The wheel has turn'd; the world again is young.
The mob, the troops that down the distance stand
Lingering and loose, are with the lily strung;
The poissarde beauties whirling hand in hand,
Fling up the exiled flower with shouts;—such is the land!

XXVII.

A distant trumpet sounds; the river shore
Sends it in echoes on; the soldiers haste
To loose their piles of muskets;—standards soar,
Drums rattle,—voices clamour,—bugles blast;
The mob confused from side to side are cast;
Horsemen dash by with spur and slacken'd rein.
Moment of tumult! quickly come and past.
To bridge and wall the crowd like billows drain,
And all their myriad eyes are fix'd along the Seine.

XXVIII.

The flourish swells again. The Louvre arch
Pours out an instant flood of sight and sound.
Dense as a wall the steel'd cuirassiers march,
With clash, and clang, and chargers' mettled bound,
And leaders' cries, as squadron'd, wheeling round
Successive from the porte, they meet the glare,
Blazed back from helm and mail. Yet all are drown'd
In the proud, sudden shout that rends the air,
As on his barb reins out the royal mousquetaire.

XXIX.

They come, as brilliant and as gay a train,
As in the brightest noon of chivalry
Poised the light lance, or wound the broidered rein,
To win the glance of royal beauty's eye.
And every emblem rich and lovely dye,
And blazonry of gold and costly stone,
Flashes, from knightly spur to helmet high,
Around the youthful champions of the throne,
They had their hour of woe, their triumph is well won.

XXX.

It was a dreary time; that deep midnight,
Which saw those warriors to their chargers spring,
And, sadly gathering by the torch's light,
Draw up their squadrons round their ruin'd king:
Then, through the streets, long, silent, slumbering,
Move like some secret noble funeral:
Each forced in turn to feel his bosom wring,
As in the gleam shone out his own proud hall,
His own no more;—no more!—he had abandon'd all!

XXXI.

And when, through many a league of chase and toil,
With panting steed, red spur, and sheathless sword,
At last they reach'd the stranger's sheltering soil;
They saw their country, where they saw its lord.
Proudly they fenced the Bourbons' couch and board;—
Better the exile's dungeon, or his tomb,
Than the base triumphs of the rebel's sword.
They saw the lightning gathering through the gloom;
They knew the wrath would come,—and sternly did it come.

XXXII.

I love not war, too oft the mere, mad game
That tyrants play to keep themselves awake.
But 'tis not war—it earns a nobler name—
When men gird on the sword for conscience' sake,
When country, king, faith, freedom are the stake.
There is a power in man that passeth show.
England, if e'er ambition think to shake
The holy diadem from thy freeborn brow,
Up, in the name of Heaven! and strike the freeman's blow.

XXXIII.

Yet they were happier in that foreign soil,
The exile's home, perhaps to be his grave;—
Than those who came to revel in their spoil.
The feast was over in the bandit's cave,
The first, hot, wild excess had ceased to rave;—
And now 'twas hush'd debate and jealous fear;
The ruffian's hand the ruffian's heart misgave;
And crowded close, with sword half drawn, quick ear,
They seem'd the thunder-peal, the avenging hosts, to hear.

XXXIV.

Aye; 'twere a lesson worth an age of man,
To look upon that council chill and late—
The grand Impostor, now with conscience wan,
Waiting his own, who fix'd an empire's fate;
Sunk to the dust; for terror knows not state.
Round him of glaring visages a cloud,
Like naked passions, shame, ire, horror, hate;
Each taunting each, all on their tempter loud,
All seeing in their steps the scaffold and the shroud.

XXXV.

The pomp has deepen'd. Thro' the Louvre-arch
Swells out the horse and foot's unwearied tide;
A sheet of steel the close-lock'd column's march,
Waving, as plants the mass its solid stride;
A following cloud, the squadron's plume of pride
Floating above.—But soon and statelier bound
A troop, to whom, as down the lines they ride,
The deep drums roll, the standards stoop profound,
The upturn'd trumpets give the rich, saluting sound.

XXXVI.

France is herself again;—bridge, roof, and wall,
Are lined with faces struggling for the show.
The pageant comes;—uncapp'd and hush'd are all;
It comes, with many a pause, expanding slow
In splendour, like the summer's showery bow;
A press of horse and herald, lance and vane;
And pages piled in gold and scarlet-glow
On chariot roofs; and barbs with ribbon'd mane;
And chieftains spurring round, with star, and staff, and chain.

XXXVII.

Marshal and duke, in flank, and front, and rear,
An inner cohort, guard the Sovereign,
And that fair, jewell'd form—his daughter dear,
The royal Angoulême; and where the train
Halt for the moment, bursts the shout again,
And swell the trumpets lifted to the sky.
They move,—and still arise the shout and strain,
And all along their march is ear and eye,
Till in the Abbey's porch the last deep concords die.

XXXVIII.

The pile is full; and oh, what splendours there
Rush, in thick tumult, on the entering eye!
The Gothic shapes, fantastic, yet austere;
The altar's crown of seraph imagery;
Champion and king that on their tombstones lie,
Now cluster'd deep with beauty's living bloom;
And glanced from shadowy stall and alcove high,
Like new-born light, through that mysterious gloom,
The gleam of warrior steel, the toss of warrior plume.

XXXIX.

The organ peals; at once, as some vast wave,
Bend to the earth the mighty multitude,
Silent as those pale emblems of the grave
In monumental marble round them strew'd.
Low at the altar, forms in cope and hood
Superb with gold-wrought cross and diamond twine,
Life in their upturn'd visages subdued,
Toss their untiring censers round the shrine,
There on her throne of clouds the Virgin sits divine.

XL.

But, only kindred faith can fitly tell
Of the high ritual at that altar done,
When clash'd the arms and rose the chorus-swell,
Then sank,—as if beneath the grave 'twere gone;
Till broke the spell the mitred abbot's tone,
Deep, touching, solemn, as he stood in prayer,
A dazzling form upon its topmost stone,
And raised, with hallowed look, the Host in air,
And bless'd with heavenward hand the thousands kneeling there.

XLI.

Pompous!—but love I not such pomp of prayer;
Ill bends the heart 'mid mortal luxury.
Rather let me the meek devotion share,
Where, in their silent glens and thickets high,
England, thy lone and lowly chapels lie.
The spotless table by the eastern wall,
The marble, rudely traced with names gone by,
The pale-eyed pastor's simple, fervent call;
Those deeper wake the heart, where heart is all in all.

XLII.

Vain the world's grandeur to that hallow'd roof
Where sate our fathers many a gentle year;
All round us memory; at our feet the proof,
How deep the grave holds all we treasure here:
Nay, where we bend, still trembling on our ear
The voice whose parting rent life's loveliest ties;
And who demands us all, heart, thought, tear, prayer?
Ev'n He who saith “Mercy, not sacrifice,”
Cares He for mortal pomp, whose footstool is the skies!

XLIII.

If pride be evil;—if the holiest sighs
Must come from humblest hearts, if man must turn
Full on his wreck of nature, to be wise;—
If there be blessedness for those who mourn;—
What speak the purple gauds that round us burn?
Ask of that kneeling crowd whose glances stray
So restless round on altar, vestment, urn;
Can guilt weep there? can mild repentance pray?
Ask, when this moment's past, how runs their sabbath day!

XLIV.

Their sabbath day! Alas! to France that day
Comes not; she has a day of looser dress,
A day of thicker crowded ball and play,
A day of folly's hotter, ranker press;
She knoweth not its hallowed happiness,
Its eve of gather'd hearts and gentle cheer.
Paris! how many an outcast might confess
Her first temptation in its guilty glare!
What saith yon sullen Morgue?—go, seek the victim there.

XLV.

'Tis open!—Never fails its sight of woe!
And crowds are rushing to that fearful dome,
And crowds are scattering out, subdued and slow;
They've seen,—to what complexion life may come.
'Tis narrow as the grave, a house of gloom:
And on the wall, with ouze and blood long dyed,
Are hung a spangled robe, a broken plume,
Dropping, as fresh-drawn from the river tide,
And cold beneath them lies—the lost!—the suicide!

XLVI.

A few rude boards are now her beauty's bed;
Her still and roseless cheek has now no veil
But one long, dripping lock across it shed;
Yet her wide eye looks living. Oh! the tale
Told there—of reason that began to fail,
Of wild remorse, of the last agony,
When wandering, desperate, in the midnight gale,
She flung to sightless heaven her parting cry,
Then in the dark wave plunged, to struggle and to die.

XLVII.

The crowd pass on. The hurried, trembling look,
That dreaded to have seen some dear one there,
Soon glanced, they silent pass. But in yon nook,
Who kneels, deep shrinking from the oriel's glare,
Her forehead veil'd, her lip in quivering prayer,
Her raised hands with the unfelt rosary wound?
That shrouded,—silent—statue of despair
Is she who through the world's delusive round
Had sought her erring child, and found, and there had found!

XLVIII.

Fair Angoulême! in what empurpled bower
Pass'd thy young innocence the sunny hour?—
Her sun was dim. The prison was the clime
That struck upon the royal infant's prime.
Her joys, to watch the sentinel's dull round,
Till her ear sicken'd at the weary sound;
To count, yet care not for the hour's slow wheel,
As one on whom the grave had set its seal;
To pine upon her pillow for the day,
Yet, seen, to wish its cheerless beam away;
Then, tremble as drew on the tedious night,
And feel as life were parting with the light;—
Then—to her couch, to weep and watch for morn,
To shew her she was living—and forlorn!

She had companions. Deeper misery!
All whom she loved on earth were there—to die!
And they must perish from her—one by one—
And her soul bleed with each, till all were gone.

This is the woe of woes, the sting of fate,
To see our little world grow desolate,
The few on whom the very soul reclined
Sink from the eye, and feel we stay behind;—
Life, to the farthest glance, a desert road,
Dark, fearful, weary—yet that must be trod.

Daughter of France! did not such pangs compress
Thy heart in its last, utter loneliness?
Didst thou not droop thy head upon thy hand,
Then, starting, think that time was at a stand,
And find its flight but by the thicker gloom
That dimm'd thy solitary dungeon room?
Didst thou not gaze upon thy glimpse of sky,
And long to bid the last, best hour be nigh?
Or melted even by that moment's view,
Stoop to the world again, and think, how blue,
How bright to thousands spread its canopy;
How many a joyous heart and laughing eye,
Buoyant with life and hope, and free,—oh, free!—
Bask'd in the brightness thou shouldst never see?

Her world was past; her hours, or few or more,
Left her bound, wretched—all she was before!
This, this is misery—the headsman's steel
Strikes, and we perish—but we cease to feel.

XLIX.

The Temple tower is fallen; yet still the grot
Lives in pale mockery of the woeful spot;
The weedy walk still borders the parterre,
A few wild shrubs still drink the heavy air;
And, help'd by some rude tracery on the green,
The eye may image where the pile has been:
But all is past,—trench, buttress, bustling guard,—
For silence, ruin, and the pale, dead sward.
Heaven! what wild weight of suffering was prest
In this close den, this grave in all but rest!
What hope, fear, agony the high hearts thrill'd,
That mercy, though 'twas blood, so quickly still'd;
And what high hearts that fiery circle ran,
And what fiends urged them, in the shape of man!

I trod the ground with reverence, for that ground
Was holy to my tread; its dungeon-bound,
Dear as the spot where blood and ashes tell
That there the martyr closed his triumph well;
The torture's tools ev'n hallow'd—brand and stake,
Scourge, fetter—all, all relics for his sake.
Ev'n on that weedy path had moved the train
Who never move to human eyes again.
Sad Antoinette! Alas! her morning star
Was set, and all its worshippers were far.

She had no sphere to lighten now; that wall
Enclosed her palace, kingdom, world—her all!
Yet, to the last, her glance was majesty,
Or dimm'd but when it met her partner's eye;—
And learn'd its patience of the eye that met
The chain, the dungeon, death, as nature's debt;
No murmur on the monarch's lip, in heaven
The heart, the world forgotten and forgiven.
And there their infants clung, subdued and nigh;
There follow'd the meek sister, fix'd to die.

It was a walk of woe. By spy and guard
The converse of the pining heart debarr'd;
Forced to hear taunts that shock'd the purer ear,
And while they wrung their souls, not seem to hear;
Longing to lay down life, yet driven to win,
For their unconscious babes, the men of sin;—
Till the bell toll'd, and some grim centinel
Block'd up their path, and turn'd them to their cell.

Yet hours were spent within that fearful pile,
When the lip wore the sainted spirit's smile;
When books, and such light toil as smooths away,
If aught can smooth, the lingering prison day:
And more, that holy unity of heart
That smiled together, only wept apart;
Peace, prayer, and heaven, their gentle hearts enwove,
Dungeons themselves but ministers of love!
Their days were number'd, and the grave's dark stone
Soon chill'd their agonies;—one, orphan'd one!
Left here to weep:—no!—left to wait the time
Destined to give them the revenge sublime;

Destined to bid their child, their heroine, bear
A nation's sorrows to their sepulchre.

L.

'Tis noon: the flags cling close on roof and spire,
The sun burns broad, a ball of living fire;
The sky is blue—celestial, summer-blue:
Here rise no sulphurous smokes to shroud its hue;
No clouds of pestilence, that mine and forge,
To blot out heaven and poison earth, disgorge.

Now comes the idler's hour. The beggar-bard
Takes his old quarters on the gay Boulevard;
Beneath the trees the Conjuror spreads his tools;
The Quack harangues his group of graver fools
In lofty lies, unruffled by the jar
Thrumm'd from his neighbour Savoyard's guitar;
Veil'd virgins beam, like Dian in a mist;
Philosophers show mites; she-tumblers twist;
Each the fix'd genius of some favourite tree,
Dryads and fauns of Gallic minstrelsy.

In double glories now, the broad Marchande,
Fire-eyed, her skin by Gascon summers tann'd,
Red as the kerchief round her coal-black hair,
Lays out her tempting trays of rich and rare;
Resistless ruby bands, delicious rings,
In genuine paste; the true wax coral strings,
Mingling with wonders of profounder art,
Woman's dear helps to mystify the heart;
Crisp auburn curls,—to hide th'obtrusive gray,
That stubborn hue, which yet will make its way;
Glass eyes, mouse eyebrows, teeth like studs of snow,
Grinning in grim good humour row by row;
Secrets so stiffly kept from upper air,
Yet here let loose, the sex's whole repair.
And here, in all the splendors of placard,
Beauty's last polishers, the rouge and fard!
Mysterious things! that, like the tricks of dreams,
Make what is seem not, while what is not, seems;
Deep witcheries! whose absence makes the fright,
Raising their ghosts at morn, their nymphs at night—

Soft potions! minister'd with softest skill,—
Yet used with desperate intent—to kill;
Obedient charms! that many a charming maid
Summons long after all the rest are laid!

The air grows furnace-hot; flag, awning, screen,
Peep endless from those lovely lines of green;
Yet Autumn has been there;—the russet tinge,
Deep purples, pearly grays, the poplars fringe;
And ever, in the distance some proud tower
Looks out in feudal beauty from its bower.
All a strange, mirthful, melancholy show;
Stately decay above, wild life below!
This is no city-scene. The tree, the tent,
The small, bright flags that break the line's extent;
The guns defiling down the central road,
The escort round the halted convoy strow'd,
The courier Cossack rushing in career
With low bent head, slack rein, and levell'd spear,
The clang within the lines, the measur'd tramp,
The mime and minstrel sounds,—is this a camp?

And this a hurrying army, that have made
Their forest-halt till noon's high blaze is staid;
To move with eve, to see the twilight's gray
Float on their banners many a league away;
At morn to spring to arms, at noon—be laid
Silent and pale—nor care for sun or shade?
It is a camp; a matchless host;—the breeze
That lets in sunlight through the heaving trees,
Flings into sudden splendour form and plume,
Like visions, flashing bright, then lost in gloom;—
Perpetual blaze of gem, and steel, and gold;
Russ helm, Hungarian mantle's broider'd fold,
Green Tartar-turban, Georgian orange shawl
O'er silver mail; deep sables of Ural;
Broad bosoms corsleted with cross and star;
Dark, haughty faces bronzed with glorious war,
Champions, that each a battle's strength has stood,
Chief caterers of the vulture's fearful food;
Now mingled,—mighty with one triumph more
Greatest and last,—Earth's day of war is o'er!

LI.

A distant bell has toll'd,—the wanderers well
Know in its heavy clang the palace bell;
And each puts on his speed, and many a stride
Has passed its courts before the sound has died.
The gates stand closed; the Swiss, a thing of state,
Poising his key as if the key of fate,
Smiles, soothes, impartial deals his soft survey
To the proud strugglers whom he keeps at bay;
The answering smile, bribe, menace tried in vain,
An entrance from his weaker man to gain.
The signal comes at last. The portals all
Are instant open, instant fill'd the hall;
Winding, a long, bright column, up the stair,
On press its plumaged host of brave and fair,
With many a wondering glance, and voice of mirth.
But France! thou guiltiest of the guilty earth,
Why lives in all thy scenes of great or gay
Something that makes the spirit turn away,
Some traitorous taint, some odour of the vault,
Scarce to be thought on, ne'er to be forgot?

If man would worship murder, man might fall
At murder's darkest shrine in that high hall.

Broad day,—the nation gazing on the deed,—
A righteous king unthroned—torn out—to bleed!
His band in blood above, his gallant band,
That stair their fort, their field, their last sad stand.
Then roll'd the crowd—no press of holiday;
'Twas steel to steel, to musket musket's play;
Then there were sparklings through the balustrade—
'Twas the sword shivering on the bayonet blade;
Up to the roof was cloud,—a mass of night,
The volley's livid burst the only light;
Scarce known where man was gorging upon man,
But by the clots that down its sculptures ran;
Or the lopp'd head that by the gory hair
High whirl'd, shot like a meteor down the stair;
Or the torn wretch who, gash'd too deep to fly,
Dragg'd to the porch his mangled limbs to die.
The roar went on above. Vile, noble trunk
On that red spot in thick communion sunk;

The glorious dead, the guilty in one gore,
They met in madness, and they part no more.

Tis past, or past to those who now spread on
Sportive, through chambers thick with couch and throne;
Large, lofty, gorgeous, all that meets the eye
Strong with the stamp of ancient majesty;
The impress which so undefined, yet clear,
Tells that the former Mighty have been there.
All looking hoary pomp; the walls rich scroll'd,
The roof high flourish'd, arras stiff with gold,
In many a burning hue and broad festoon
Wreathing those casements, blazon'd now with noon;
The marble tablets on their silver claws,
Loaded with nymph, and grace, and pix, and vase.
Beside the mirror foot, the Indian screen
Dazzling the eye with dragons red and green:
The mighty mirror, brightning, doubling all,
In its deep crystal lit an endless hall.

The rout a moment paused, gave glance and smile,
Then scatter'd on, to wonder through the pile;

Yet there was beauty in the very light
That round the chamber roll'd its gush of white,
And well the wanderer there might feel his gaze
Tranced by the bright creations of the blaze.
It stoops, a pyramid of fire,—the floor
Gleams like a shifting bed of molten ore;
It strikes the antique mail, the mail returns
A sanguine flame; the vase in jasper burns;
The deep-nich'd statue in that lustre thrown
Gleams, as if light were flashing from the stone;
The altar curtain droops, a pale, proud fold;
'Tis touch'd—'tis living purple, imaged gold.

A massive porte rolls back; the walls, thick starr'd
With pike and pistol, tell the hall of guard.
War all its emblems, from the gloomy roof
Girt with its bold, black forms in knightly proof,
Down to the floor, where by his bright stockade
Paces the mousquetaire in slow parade.
But man may be the sterner emblem still;
Marshal and prince around the canvass fill;

War's thunderbolts! their track was blood and flame,
They blazed and sank—their country's boast and shame.
The heart turns from them; like the desert blast,
They rose to slay, they slew, and they are past.
And treachery has been here. There hangs a pall
For ever on the Marshals' pompous hall.

LII.

The crowd have scatter'd far,—a distant room
Has check'd their laughter; swift and hush'd they come.
What holds the wonderers now? A canopy,
Topp'd with a mouldering plume, a golden bee
Half from its curtain's faded crimson torn,
A cypher deep defaced, a wreath forlorn,—
They gaze but on a chair.—Yet lo! the throne
Of conquest, crime, despair—Napoleon!
This was Earth's heart! when here the sceptre strook,
Through all her realms the keen vibration shook.
The murmur here—swell'd forth an oracle,
And nations heard it in its wrath, and fell.

Here stamp'd the foot,—and bursting up like flame,
The crown-givers, the eagle legions came.
There was a darkness on it; woe to eye
That dared to pierce the evil sanctuary!
Prowess and pomp were there; the gloomy spear
Waved in incessant circuit; prince and peer
Bowing their haughty foreheads helm'd and crown'd,
Hung like a fiery cloud the throne around.
It had a mightier guard,—that cloud within,
Sate Guilt that chill'd the heart, substantial Sin;
And man had bled, and diadems been riven,
Till terror saw it delegate of heaven.
Wisdom was air, strength ashes, valour wan,
Before the form, the man, if that were man!

Is there not one—a being from his height
Of glory fall'n, a shape of burning might,
A ruin'd grandeur, angel beauty marr'd,
On his trench'd brow the early crown unstarr'd;
Condemn'd through earth on restless wing to range,
His joy, his agony, revenge, revenge:

And has he not the passing power to dart,
Supernal vigour through the traitor's heart;
Seduce the weak before him, bend the high,
Till the world owns its evil Deity?

The Tyrant's peace was fearful. Fatal guile
Entomb'd the slaves who trusted to his smile.
But when he scorn'd the mask, and shouted war,
And here unroll'd the banner of the star;
Who slumber'd then?—what land but fix'd its eye
For omens on the eagle's augury?
The ancient empires shook. The mighty North
Sent her reluctant suppliants hurrying forth;
The South gave up her gold. The Ottoman
Cower'd to a haughtier sultan's dark divan.
And he, the Master, sate beneath that plume,
And kings stood here, nay trembling, in this room;
His vassals,—wither'd in his evil blaze;
And now—the meanest hind may scoff and gaze!

The final vengeance came! but sent by whom?
Was it in man to burst this den, this tomb!

Lives there the human heart that dared to hope
To stand in scorn beneath this charnel cope?
'Twas as if Heav'n would bare to human eyes
Its empire o'er its own fierce agencies.
As if the tempest-cloud had oped its gorge,
To shew the secrets of the thunder's forge.
As if some final shock had drunk the wave
That rolls in gloom o'er ocean's central cave;
Stripping to man its bosom, boundless vale
Of wreck and buried wealth, and corpses pale;
The world of storms and sepulchres subdued;
All one wild waste—death, silence, solitude!

Stranger and enemy are round that chair;
But are no sterner shapes of friendship there?
No haughty frowns, bold tauntings, bitter sighs,
No pangs our nature knows not, till it dies?
Gaze ye not here, who, freezing in your gore,
Made the drear halt on Berezyna's shore;
And heard the Tartar's shout, and rushing wave,
Mark, through the dusk, the limits of your grave,

And felt the polar night your gashes sear,
And died in torture, but to fix him here?
And ye! the plumed and trampling chivalry,
Who rode on Leipsic's plain of death to die;
And met the German sword, and fiery shower,
To save him for another, fiercer hour!
It came;—ye last, consummate sacrifice!
Wing ye not here in deeper agonies?
Ye, round whose hearts still hangs the clotted blood,
Whose flesh is still the Flemish raven's food;
Rolls not upon the wind your countless train,
With cloudier visages of shame and pain?
Yet in the field ye fell. Ne'er battle soil
Such booty bore, where corpses were the spoil;
And he, for whom ye bled, on whom your eye
Turn'd in its dimness, dared do all but die!
Ye massacred! behold the prize ye won;
The throne, and him who sat upon that throne.

The heavens were sick of crime,—the endless strife
Where black ambition flung its stake of life.

The trial came.—On rush'd, with shout and ban,
The rebel hosts, their Idol in the van;
Strength of their heart, and wonder of their eye;
Illusive glory, for his hour was nigh.
Their rites of blood arose. In vain the name
Of their dark Baal echoed. Evening came.—
Then the true thunders roll'd. Their livid gaze
Saw the horizon one advancing blaze;
They saw it smite their Idol on his throne;
And he was smote,—pomp, art, illusion, gone.
Then died his worshippers. The jealous steel
Raged through their quivering ranks with faithful zeal
The sacrifice was done! and on its wing
The earth sent up the shout of thanksgiving.

END OF THE FIRST PART.

I Kings, chap. 18.

II. PART II.

“The Stygian throng
Bent their aspéct, and whom they wish'd beheld,
Their mighty chief return'd.”
“A greater power
Now ruled him, punish'd in the shape he sinn'd,
According to his doom.”
MILTON.

[_]

NOTE. The former part of this Poem touched on the revolutionary memorials of Paris. The time was supposed to occupy the Morning and the Noon. The present view occupies the Evening, to the verge of Night. Its chief objects are, “The Louvre Gallery,” “The Venetian Horses,” “The Defeat in Russia,” “Napoleon's Exile,” “The Death of Louis XVI.” “George the Third,” &c.

I.

King of the past, proud sitter by the grave
Where nations slumber; pale Antiquity!
What thousand shapes obey thy sceptre's wave!
Chieftains, with all their hosts like clouds, rush by;
Sages whose thrones are bright in yonder sky;
Genius with all her sons, whose thoughts were wings;
Beauty, whose glance bade empires live and die;
Wild hearts that drank of passion's fiery springs,
All from their shadowy world thy mighty sceptre brings.

II.

Prince, warrior, priest—the crown, the helm, the hood,
Ev'n on this spot, rose, sway'd, and sank away.
Above that golden gate! Napoleon stood—
The curse and omen of our evil day;
Gathering, like thunderclouds, his last array,
That went to battle, ne'er to come again;
Their Xerxes shed no tear! they went to slay;
Vengeance awoke at last, and they were slain!
And now—above it waves the Lily's exiled vane!

III.

There stands his Arch of victory, but there
Its idol stands no more.—His day is done!
Close by the pile sits Austria's cuirassier,
Busy and gazing groups are on it strown,
A wain is at its foot, as if for one
Who on that crowded scaffold came to die;
And the quick murmurings there, the engine's groan,
Short, deep, give semblance of a dying cry:
France, on that scaffold ends thy gloomy sovereignty.

IV.

For, thence must stoop the glorious Grecian steeds
That his fierce hand had yoked to Victory's wheel.
Now following where a newer conqueror leads,
To thy blue waters, Venice, bends their heel!
Trophies! how oft has steel thus shiver'd steel,
Since first their wanderings fix'd the doom of war!
But lives not in those fiery fronts a spell?
Were not those orb'd eyes moulded, when the air
Of midnight shook and glowed with the red comet's glare?

V.

Ye stars! bright legions that, before all time,
Camped on yon plain of sapphire, what shall tell
Your burning myriads, but the eye of Him
Who bade through heaven your golden chariots wheel?
Yet who earthborn can see your hosts, nor feel
Immortal impulses—Eternity?
What wonder if the o'erwrought soul should reel
With its own weight of thought, and the wild eye
See fate within your tracks of sleepless glory lie?

VI.

For ye behold the Mightiest! From that steep
What ages have worshipp'd round your King!
Ye heard his trumpet sounded o'er Earth's sleep;
Ye heard the morning angels o'er it sing;
Upon that orb, above me quivering,
Gazed Adam from his bower in paradise.
The wanderers of the Deluge saw it spring
Above the buried world, and hail'd its rise,
Lighting their lonely track with Faith's celestial dyes.

VII.

On Calvary shot down that purple eye,
When, but the soldier and the sacrifice
All were departed.—Mount of Agony!
But Time's broad pinion, ere the giant dies,
Shall cloud your dome.—Ye fruitage of the skies,
Your vineyard shall be shaken!—From your urn,
Censers of Heaven! no more shall glory rise,
Your incense to the Throne!—The heavens shall burn:
For all your pomps are dust, and shall to dust return.

VIII.

Yet, look ye living intellects.—The trine
Of waning planets speaks it not decay?
Does Schedir's staff of diamond wave no sign?
Monarch of midnight, Sirius, shoots thy ray
Undimm'd, when thrones sublunar pass away?
Dreams!—yet if e'er was graved in vigil wan
Your spell on gem or imaged alchemy,
The sign when empire's hour-glass downwards ran,
'Twas on that arch, graved on that brazen talisman.

IX.

Greece! thou wast still a country,—Memory bleeds
To think how early died that glorious name!
Yet still 'twas glorious, while the matchless Steeds
Stood on thy Isthmus gate.—The Roman came,
Red from the fight, his eagle's wing of flame
Waving o'er idol shields, and wolf-crests tall;
Then widow'd Corinth groan'd, in all her shame,
To see the Lictors mount the pedestal.
Then Greece was doom'd to fall; a deadly, final fall.

X.

The glass ran down! The immortal Steeds again
Must set to rise, like empire's fatal star;
Rome, the world's vanquisher, seem'd vanquished then.
The unhelm'd Roman beat his breast afar,
The spoilers march'd in pomp of eastern war.
There loured from elephants the turban'd brow,
There archers gleam'd on camel and on car,
And there, in gold and gem's barbaric glow,
Triumph'd the purpled Greek—the King of Kings below.

XI.

But stronger omens chill the idolater;
Above the standards towers a Cross of red.
Oh, if he knew that sign, no sign of fear!
Rome's crown is rent; now may her Pontiff shed
The ashes on his brow, her Augur spread
His eyes to mark the lightning o'er his shrine.
The hour has come! The mystic steeds have fled,
The Eagle stoops before the Cross divine;
Empire has gone, to dwell with mighty Constantine.

XII.

The glass ran down! Long had the coursers stood,
Of Fate and Empire the unchanged record;
Long had the Eastern Harlot's cup of blood
Made drunk the nations at her midnight board;
Long had the martyr's groan from racks been pour'd;
Their graves cried out, the winds bore up the cry,
And it was heard, and in the West the sword
Was girded on the Christian champion's thigh:
Woe to her turban'd front of pride and blasphemy.

XIII.

A hostile trumpet summon'd.—'Twas a sound
That ne'er before had pierced her jewell'd ear.
On her indignant brow the helm was bound,
With giant grasp she seized the mace and spear.
She look'd upon the sea.—A cross was there,
Red as her own, and with it rush'd a train,
That seem'd like Ocean's lords their barks to steer,
An endless cloud of mast, and sheet, and vane,
Tempest of wrath and woe, with blood for all the rain.

XIV.

I must to other themes, yet thought delays
As o'er a noble grave, above the scene,
Brought by that hour before me;—morning's blaze
Flaming on wall, and shore, and surge of green;
The galleys, like a wood, the capes between,
Then flashing onwards;—on the foremost prow
A warrior who his ninetieth year has seen,
To whom the ring of gold-mail'd princes bow,
As if to War grown old, immortal Dandolo!—

XV.

Constantinople!—then thy shout arose,
And from thy ramparts roll'd the mystic flame
Unquenchable—The ranks of battle close:
The galleys rush'd with catapult and ram,
Like hail the lances from the turrets came,
And decks were fired, and champions downwards flung,
Till wall, and shore, and surge in crimson swam.
'Twas noon, the Grecian trumpet fainter rung;
At eve the Red-cross knights their hymn of triumph sung!

XVI.

Then saw the Hippodrome the Genoese spear,
For the bright Steeds must sail the western sea;
And round the Circus gallop'd in career,
With blazon'd shield, helm barr'd, and lance at knee,
Like towers of steel, the German Chivalry.
The Venice mariner, in cap and plume,
And gold-seam'd gabardine, look'd on with glee;
The Greek stood rapt, as by an opening tomb,
As if his spirit saw the Turk in Sophia's Dome.

XVII.

The glass ran down! and Venice must resign
The talisman of empire to the Gaul.
Her emerald ring no more must wed the brine.
Feebly she falls, yet more than she must fall:
A thousand years had stood her sacred wall,
The Isthmus-guard to lovely Italy;
And now the horn has blown the final call
That bids in chains another Corinth lie,
Another Greece bow down to blood and perfidy.

XVIII.

A throng was in St. Mark's, but 'twas no throng
Like that, which o'er the Adriatic foam
Had borne the Steeds with warrior shout and song,
Then fix'd them for long glory o'er the dome:
She sinn'd, and now the hour of wrath was come;
Though 'twas the robber made the adult'ress bare:
The crowd were fierce-eyed men with pike and drum
And brazen gun, and tri-colour's broad glare;
The pale Venetian stood aloof, in weak despair.

XIX.

Such is the spoil of Time!—Unhallowed thought!
Empires might stand, unshaken as their globe.
But which has worn its ermine without spot?
'Twas Justice, and not Time that tore their robe.
What sent the steel their pamper'd hearts to probe?
'Twas their own blow, no matter by what name,
Conspirator, or conqueror, monarch, mob.
They built their pile, then Judgment sent the flame,
To rid the earth of guilt, the wearied heaven of shame.

XX.

'Tis not in mockery of man that earth
Is strewed with splendid fragments, temple, tower;
That realms, where glory sprang full arm'd to birth,
Are desolate, the snake and tiger's bower;—
They lie the monuments of evil power,
Not freaks of chance, but warnings against crime;
And ancient Nineveh, to earth's last hour,
Had she been pure, might stand as in her prime;
Nay, stand in growing pomp, till God had finish'd time.

XXI.

England! my great, my glorious,—loved with love
That almost makes a portion of the soul;
The hour has come to fix thine eye above.
There lie the thunders thou alone must roll,
And roll upon thyself;—There spreads the scroll,
Where thine own hand must write thy destiny.
None can decide but thou, if wolves shall howl,
And the black viper in thy temples lie.
Be holy, and thou 'rt saved; England, thou must not die!

XXII.

Again the glass runs down! The Steeds must range;
Aye, till the tangled web of Time be spun.
Thou King of Kings, above all chance or change,
When shall this toil and strife of earth be done;
When his Great Year be roll'd by Empire's sun?
Come to our world, thou Triumpher, whose train
Are cherubim, and take thy promised throne.
Come Conqueror of man's misery, death's chain.
Come, first-born from the dead, and reign, for ever reign!

XXIII.

The Louvre halls are fill'd with strange turmoil
Of axe and hammer, steps and voices loud,
For there the victors seize a noble spoil;
'Twas won by England's arm in Soignié's wood.
Yon bayonets still are rusty with the blood
That drench'd its dark ravines. The struggle's o'er,
So may the restless rancour be subdued.
The final lesson's given. The might that tore
That matchless prize from France, proclaimed, “Go sin no more.”

XXIV.

Kingly and broad ascends the Parian stair,
Fit entrance to the regal glories nigh;
And toilsome 'tis to make the passage there,
Through its thick crowd incessant rushing by.
The summit gain'd,—like lightning on the eye,
Bursts the deep vision, from the stately door,
One colour'd splendour, far as glance can fly,
Gold, marble, giant mirror, o'er and o'er,
Flashing in sun-like streams from fretted vault to floor.

XXV.

These were thy spoil, sad Italy: the prey
Of slaves that sent thy glories to the tomb.
Still on thy odour-breathing heaven the day
Awoke on roses, and the evening gloom
Sail'd down the azure on as soft a plume
As ever fann'd the air in Summer's bower;
But the high voice that bade the nations come
To love and worship, parted in that hour.
These were thy crown of stars, thy soul, thy living power!

XXVI.

Yet these are thy revenge.—The spoiler's spoil'd;—
Ev'n on this spot is given the deadliest blow;
Here on the robber's head his crime recoil'd.
Strange scene, of wonderers hasting to and fro,
And soldiers on their posts parading slow,
And the fix'd native with his livid glare,
And woman with her ready burst of woe,
And eager artists scaffolded in air,
Catching its pomps before that dazzling wall is bare.

XXVII.

But man and earth have vanish'd from the eye,
Once on its host of silent beauty roll'd,
Ranged in their tribes, ascending majesty!
Holland's fine touch, the Flanders pencil bold,
Superb Venetian, pearl and purple stoled;
Romantic Lombard, fiery Florentine,
Brightening, as up the Alp the evening's gold
From the deep vineyard to the crown of pine,
Till, on the marble peak, 'tis mix'd with heaven,—divine!

XXVIII.

What are those tablets round me? Living minds—
The mighty soul in form and pressure wrought;—
Unfolded natures,—where the vision winds
Thro' what was dream, deep throb, unutter'd thought.
There breathes Salvator! That red lightning shot
From its dark throne to fire that forest hoar,
That combat in its burnings madly fought,
That lake convulsed beneath the tempest's roar,
All in Salvator's soul toss'd, battled, burn'd, before.

XXIX.

And o'er them, o'er these very hues have hung
The men, whom empires reckon in their fame,
Kings, sages;—Here from morn till midnight clung
Immortal genius, lavishing its flame.
Guido for this flung down his maddening game,
Startling the revellers, who saw his eyes
Flashing with thoughts that like the lightnings came,
And his brow clouding, as the vision'd cries
Of Peter woke his own repentant agonies.

XXX.

Here, Raphael! is reveal'd the mystery,
That fixed the hectic crimson on thy cheek—
Here sank the earnest radiance of thine eye,
Dying beneath th'empassioned thoughts, that wreck
Spirits like thine;—Those eagle flights that seek
And perish in the sun-beams;—glorious fires,
That from their heaven around the mountain break
With crowning splendour, till the storm retires,
Leaving but smoke and dust, of all its marble spires.

XXXI.

Behold the Masterpiece,—as not with hands
Of human weakness wrought! how fiercely cold
That boy, divested of his nature, stands,
Maddening!—his eye in wild possession roll'd!
How shrinks the father from his stony hold!
What sorrow in the kneeling sister's eye
Turns on the group of more than mortal mould,
That o'er him all their words of wonder try,
All vain, all vanquish'd, he must writhe, and waste, and die.

XXXII.

The hope of hopes is there! but to the mount
Scarce dare their holy hands or eye-balls turn.
For on its brow, amid a fiery fount,
He floats, by his instinctive virtue borne,
He, for whose wounds the tribes of earth shall mourn,
Transfigured, in the majesty divine.
Jerusalem! that glory was thy scorn,
Thy king was made a mockery and a sign,
A thousand years!—His blood is still on thee and thine!

XXXIII.

Resplendent Titian! what a host of thoughts,
What memories of stars and midnight moons,
And long hours pass'd beneath the emerald vaults
Of forests, and the sweet eve's thousand tunes,
When the breeze rushes through the vine-festoons,
Show'ring their dew-drops; are concentred here!
And forms of prince and knight in proud saloons,
And dames with dark Italian eyes, that ne'er
Knew sorrow, or but wept the heart's bewitching tear.

XXXIV.

Prometheus of the pencil! life and light
Burst on the canvass from thy mighty hand,
All hues sublime that ever dazzled sight
Where tempests die on heaven; or ever waned
On hills, the evening's azure thrones, or stain'd
Ruby or beryl in their Indian cell,
Or glanced from gem-dropt wing, or blossom vein'd,
Or tinged in ocean-caves the radiant shell,
All, at thy sceptre's wave, from all their fountains swell.

XXXV.

There shines thy trophy! a delicious maze
Of forest paths luxuriant, where the sun
Sinks, like a far-off city in a blaze,
In purple sheathing trunk and umbrage dun.
But there a fearful vengeance has begun!
The sword of wrath is in the victim's brain,
The Bigot's race of blood in blood is run.
He falls—his eye-ball writhes with mortal pain,
Yet flashes fiery pride. He struggles,—faints,—he's slain.

XXXVI.

But lo! the East is deepening; and the shade
Floats in grey softness down the gorgeous Hall,
Veiling the crimson cheek and glossy braid;
And wreathing in its slow and sweeping pall
Mirror, and bust, and Parian capital.
Silence is throned,—in distance dies the tread,—
And in the gloom its kings and champions all,
Sitting with truncheon'd hand and hoary head,
Seem spirits from the grave, a council of the dead!

XXXVII.

But eve still glows on every shaft and plinth,
And painted roof and sculptured architrave
In the rich halls below; that Labyrinth,—
Whose people are the gods of sky and wave,
Idols! that Greece to the world's worship gave,
The madness, dream, delight of sterner days,
Till Greece was but a name—a fetter'd slave.
Here is their shrine;—and the sweet sun delays,
As on their golden domes of old he loved to gaze.

XXXVIII.

Are they but stone?—Ay, many an age the wave
Has beat on beds as precious, and the sheep
Has nibbled the wild vine-shoots round the cave
Where their white beauty slept, and still might sleep,
Had not the master-chisel plunging deep
Awoke the living image from the stone.
Was their Creator born to swell the heap
Of earth's decay,—be measured by a moon?
The soul's supremacy decrees the soul its throne!

XXXIX.

Tombs are deceivers—What a mass of mind
Were church-yards,—if the chambers of the brain
Dungeon'd the spirit! Sceptic, grasp the wind,
Rule the outgoings of the storm, then chain
The fiery thought that neither mount nor main,
Not earth, heaven, time, nor thou, Eternity,
With thy dark-frowning grandeur, can restrain.
There lies the house of bondage, let it lie!
The ransom'd slave's gone forth—his freedom was to die.

XL.

I have descended to the ancient vault,
And held communion with the remnants there.
What saw I then? I saw the velvet rot;
I saw the massive brass, like cobwebs, tear;
Shewing within its rents a shape of fear,
A wreck of man; from which the reptile stole
Scared by the light.—Decaying slumberer,
The thunders on thine ear unheard might roll!
Is this pale ruin the tomb, the temple of the soul!

XLI.

Oh! misery if it were: That gliding worm
Might make its mock of us,—it feeds and then
Is full and happy—and the lordliest form
That ever ruled its fellow-wretches, men—
What were it but the lion in the den,
Biting its fetters, groaning for the sweep
Of its strong sinews?—Better, not have been,
Than desperate gaze on heaven's forbidden steep,
Than feel this world a woe; the next, death, ashes, sleep!

100

XLII.

But the freed spirit's gone;—upon the floods,
The rolling of whose waves is life, 'tis gone!
And it has mingled with the diadem'd crowds
That wing above the light of star or sun,
It lives at last,—its being has begun!
Ay, from the moment that its clouded eye
Closed on the chamber hush'd and taper dun,
It gazed on things unutterable, high
Above all height,—all hope;—on Immortality!

XLIII.

Now, to the world again.—The thought has past!—
It came, and for itself made words, and now
Has gone—as fitful as the summer blast.
Again I see imperial overthrow,
The halls resound with heavy crash and blow,
Engines and trooping feet, and labour's cries;
For there the God of many a realm lies low,
Unthroned, upon the floor's mosaic dyes,
Yet worshipp'd still, the love, the wonder of all eyes.

101

XLIV.

That crowd itself a wonder; half the world
Seem'd to have sent it for some final deed.
There gazed the deep-brow'd Calmuck, that unfurl'd
His flag by China's wall:—In wolfskin weed
The bearded Bashkir with his lance of reed;—
There the bold hunter, nursed beneath thy sky,
Tyrol, his Austrian master's strength and dread;—
There the helm'd Prussian—vengeance in his eye,
Till the last debt is paid to bitter memory.

XLV.

There the green Russian, that across thy wave,
Wild Euxine! shoots his glance of wrath and scorn
On the proud Sultanry, stupendous grave!
Where Power sits throned in shadowy pomp forlorn
Beneath the Crescent's swift-declining horn.
There towers, in gold and scarlet harnessries,
The lordly Briton, by whose lance was borne
The Godless to the earth, no more to rise!
Champion of Man and Heaven—the ransom'd world's his prize.

102

XLVI.

But all is rapture, reverence round one shrine,
Arch'd by the sunset with a burst of rays;
A form seems floating out, a youth divine,
Half throned, half mantled in the amber haze,—
High scorn, instinctive power are in his gaze;
His bow is scarce relax'd, his shaft scarce flown,
His arm uplifted still, his tress still plays;
He bends to catch the Python's dying groan,
Yet bends as if that spot were his Olympian throne.

XLVII.

King of the sun-beams—on the silvery shore
Of Delos stood thy glory, and thy name
Rose solemn from its caves and forests hoar;
And ever on its waves proud pilgrims came
Bearing upon their barks the incense-flame;
Bards, warriors, kings, with laurel-wreath and lyre,
Bound to the Mystic Isle, where life—a dream,
A lovely dream! nor cradle knew nor pyre;
Greece! like thy early heart; its fire, all hallow'd fire!

103

XLVIII.

The Persian millions came.—Thy oracle
In thunder o'er them utter'd Destiny!
From the barbarian's hand down dropped the steel,
Back rush'd their prows, it told they came to die!
Silent as death, the trump, the warrior cry,—
The slave, the satrap on his galley-throne,
The Monarch in his jewell'd canopy!
All prostrate, till afar their hosts were gone,
Girding the waters blue, a golden, sunset zone.

XLIX.

Then, answering thunders from the Olympian hill
Roll'd their deep summons to the yeasty waves,
To come, and of destruction have their fill:
And the ten thousand billows all were graves.
And on his charger through the turban'd slaves
Rode bloody Death from mountain-top to shore;
Calling the wolf and wild-dog from their caves,
And the young lion from his forest hoar,
To glut their burning jaws with kings' and princes' gore.

104

L.

Laocoon! round thy splendid form are flung
Inextricable spires,—twin serpents chain
Thy mighty limbs,—like fire, the forky tongue
Shoots o'er thy brow, that writhes with more than pain;
Their plunging fangs thy patriot life-blood drain,
Their volumes clasp thy sons, and all must die,—
But wrath and wrong are burning in thy brain,
Upon thy boys is fix'd no father's eye;
'Tis cast on Heaven, in bold, accusing agony.

LI.

Beside him sinks a warrior on his shield,
Whose history the heart alone must tell!
Now, dim in eve—he looks, as on the field,
Where when he fell, his country with him fell.
Death sickens all his soul, the blood-drops steal
Slow from his breast, congealing round the wound;
His strong arm shakes, his chest has lost its swell,
'Tis his last breath,—his eye-ball glares profound,
His heavy forehead glooms, bends, plunges, to the ground!

105

LII.

Yet had the bold barbarian joy; if tears
For Roman slaughter could rejoice his soul.
Did he not hear the crashing of the spears?
When like a midnight tide, his warriors stole
Around the slumb'ring legions—till the roll
Of the wild forest-drum awoke the glen;
And every blow let loose a Roman soul.
So let them sting the lion in his den;
Chains and the spear are chaff, when Heaven gives hearts to men!

LIII.

Had not that with'ring lip quaff'd long and deep,
The cup that vengeance for the patriot fills;
When swords instinctive from their scabbards leap,
When the dim forests, and the mighty hills,
And the lone gushings of the mountain rills,
All utter to the soul a cry of shame;
And shame, like drops of molten brass, distils
On the bare head and bosom of the tame,
Till the whole fetter'd man, heart, blood, and brain, is flame.

106

LIV.

Then there were lightnings in that clouded eye,
And sounds of triumph in that heavy ear;
Aye, and that icy limb was bounding nigh,
Tracking the Roman with the bow and spear,
As through the live-long night the death-march drear
Pierced the deep forests o'er the slaughter grown;
Seeking for ancient chief and comrade dear,
Through wolf-torn graves and haggard piles of bone,
Along the rampart ruins, and marshy trenches strown.

LV.

And what they sought they found, in wild-weed robes,
Laid in the sepulchres that thunder ploughs.
They found the circle, where the thronging globes
Of German warriors held the night's carouse,
And groans of death, and Magic's fearful vows
Startled the moon. Around the altars lay
The human hecatomb! in ghastly rows,
The leaders still unmix'd with meaner clay,
Tribune and consul stretch'd in white and wild decay.

107

LVI.

But have I still forgot thee, loveliest far
Of all,—enchanting image of Love's queen?
Or did I linger but till yon blue star,
Thy star, should crown thee with its light serene?
There stands the goddess, by the Grecian seen
In the mind's lonely, deep idolatry;
When twilight o'er Cythera's wave of green,
Drew her rich curtain, and his upturn'd eye
Was burning with the pomps of earth, and sea, and sky.

LVII.

Then came the dreamer's glorious ecstasy;
And from the vale of lilies, and the wood
Blushing with Persian roses, breathed the sigh
Of more than music; and the spell-bound flood
Bore on its waveless breast a living cloud,
Chariots of pearl, and proud sea-horses curb'd,
That with their breasts the green to silver plough'd;
And nymphs and tritons lifting trumpets orb'd,
Young Venus! round thy throne, in its own light absorb'd.

108

LVIII.

The shore is reach'd, and fear, bewitching fear,
Is in her bending form, and glancing eye,
And veiling hand, and timid-turning ear;
She listens,—'twas but Eve's enamour'd sigh!
Yet has it heaved her bosom's ivory—
Yet has it on the shore her footstep spell'd;
'Tis past.—The rustling rose alone is nigh,—
She smiles; and in that smile is all reveal'd
The charm, to which so soon the living world shall yield.

LIX.

There is a vital richness in the air,
That comes in gushes on this fading hour;
And, stately France! though Attic taste might stare
At thy strange garden freaks of fount and bower;
There lives a little soother, where one flower
Springs from its turf, a soother meant for man;
Perhaps to win his heart with silent power
To fields and peaceful thoughts from cities wan,
Where it so oft “disquieteth itself in vain.”

109

LX.

Night's wing is on the east—the clouds repose
Like weary armies of the firmament,
Encamp'd beneath their vanes of pearl and rose;
Till the wind's sudden trumpet through them sent,
Shakes their pavilions, and their pomps are blent
In rich confusion. Now the air is fill'd
With thousand odours, sigh'd by blossoms bent
In closing beauty, where the dew distill'd
From Evening's airy urns their purple lips has chill'd.

LXI.

How subtly Nature mingles in the heart
The past, the future, in this lovely time!
How home and heaven together on us start!
England! 'tis now thy autumn-sky sublime
Reminds us of the parted spirit's clime,
The hamlet clock strikes solemn as a knell;
The sinking breeze that wafts the distant chime,
The heavy harvest-team's returning bell,
The gleaner's homeward call, seem life's sad, sweet farewell.

110

LXII.

But thousands, tens of thousands in thy fields
Are counting every shade that dims this hour,
With frequent sunward look till day-light yields,
And each can turn him to the humble bower,
Where his own hand has planted every flower;
Time out of mind his father's quiet home;
Where waits him one, whose virtue was her dower,
Cheering her infants, as the deepening gloom,
Shed from the poplars, tells, he sure and soon will come.

LXIII.

He comes; the moon has lit him home at last,
And he has thrown his harvest hook away,
And kiss'd the nut-brown babes that round him haste,
Each with the little wonder of its day.
The lowly meal is spread, the moon-beams play
Through panes that bushy rose and wall-flower veil,
And soon to make them music, on her spray,
Her wonted, neighbour spray, the nightingale
Pours on the holy hour her thrilling, endless tale.

111

LXIV.

The breeze has fall'n—but sudden symphonies
Swell from beyond the gate and statued wall;
As if they echoed from the breathless skies,
The wavings of the night's o'ershadowing pall.
I am no weeper, but their rise and fall
Disturbs me,—Is the soul a harp whose strings
Vibrate tumultuous tones at music's call?
A fount, that when her touch unseals its springs
Gushes through all its old, enchanted wanderings?

LXV.

There is a flash of steel through yonder trees,
A wave of standards and a toss of plumes
O'er scarlet ranks, like foam-bursts upon seas
Ruddy with lightnings.—Hark! those well-known drums
Rolling along the shadowy camp, as comes
The night breeze rolling, then with distant wing
Sunk in wild music.—Now along the glooms
Echoes the silver trumpet, cymbals ring,
'Tis England's martial hymn!—there swells, “God save the King.”

112

LXVI.

“God save the King”—a thousand shapes of war,
Of valour, freedom, glorious suffering,
In sudden vision crowd the marble air,
Raised at the sound. Yet fearful memories fling
Their darkness on the spirit.—Here a king
Laid down his sacred head and died!—Oh, crime,
What torrents of black carnage were to spring?
What havoc of the rebel nation's prime?
Before her soul repaid that monarch's death sublime?

LXVII.

Paris! there was no sleep beneath thy roofs
The morn that saw that deed. The dim streets rung,
Long before day, with cannon, trampling hoofs,
And, fearfullest of all, the Tocsin's tongue.
Startling the eye, the passing torches flung
Their flash through many a chamber from beneath,
Then vanish'd with the thick and hurrying throng;
While the heart-sinking listener held his breath,
Catching in every sound the distant roar of death.

113

LXVIII.

But earlier than that dim and early hour
A lonely taper twinkled through the gloom;
'Twas from the casement of the Temple tower;
'Twas from a king's, a martyr's, dungeon-room!
There he subdued his spirit for its doom;
And one old priest, and one pale follower,
Knelt weeping, as beside their master's tomb.
Rude was the altar, but the heart was there,
And peace and solemn hope were in that prison prayer.

LXIX.

But trumpets peal'd, and torches glared below;
And from the tower rose woman's loud lament
And infant cries; and shadows seem'd to go
With tossing arms, and heads in anguish bent,
Backwards and forwards hurrying, then, as spent,
Sink down, and all be silent for a time;
Until the royal victims' souls were rent
With some new yell of cruelty and crime,
Or thunder'd through the dusk the Tocsin's deadly chime.

114

LXX.

The morning came in clouds; the winter's blast
Swept down in stormy gusts, then sank away
In ominous moanings, chilling, as it past,
The thousands posted in their stern array.
There was no opening door, no sound of day,
No song, no cry along the pale Boulevard;
And, save some ghastly banner's distant play,
Some clang, when in the gust the lances jarr'd,
All stretch'd before the eye one endless charnel yard.

LXXI.

And 'twas as wild and still within the square,
This square of luxury ! The morn arose;
An iron harvest bristled through the air,
Bayonet and pike in countless, close-lock'd rows.
Silent as death the crowd,—the grim repose
Before the earthquake;—None from roof or wall
Might look; no hand the casement might unclose.
And in their centre, frowning o'er them all,
Their idol—the sole god before whose name they fall:

115

LXXII.

The Guillotine!—when Hell prepared the feast,
Where guilty France was drunk, but not with wine;
Till madness sat upon her vision'd breast,—
This was the press that crush'd her bloody vine.
To this grim altar came the shuddering line,
Whose worship was,—beneath its knife to lie;
The haggard traitors to the throne and shrine,
By traitors crush'd, that in their turn must die;
Till massacre engulph'd the wreck of Liberty.

LXXIII.

The Guillotine.—It stood in that pale day
Like a huge spectre, just from earth upsprung,
To summon to the tomb the fierce array
That round its feet in desperate homage clung.
But on the wind a sudden trumpet rung.
All eyes were turn'd, and far as eye could stray,
Was caught a light, from moving helmets flung,
A banner tossing in the tempest's sway,
A wain, that through the throng slow toil'd its weary way.

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LXXIV.

He comes—the monarch on the scaffold stands;
The headsmen grasp him!—Of the thousands there,
That hear his voice, that see his fetter'd hands,
Not one has given a blessing or a tear;
But that old priest who answers him in prayer.
He speaks; his dying thoughts to France are given,
His voice is drown'd; for murder has no ear.
The patient victim to the axe is driven.
Then cried the blood, whose cry is heard from Earth to Heaven!

LXXV.

The grave must tell, when it gives up its dead,
Their after hours who o'er that blood blasphemed;
What myriads perish'd on a bloody bed,
By the pursuing hoof and sabre seam'd;
What haughty heads upon the scaffold stream'd,
What eyes rain'd anguish in the den and chain,
When on their dying hour this moment gleam'd;
What wretches felt it maddening all their pain,
From Moscow funeral fires to Belgium's gory plain.

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LXXVI.

France was anathema.—Her cup before
Was full, but this o'ertopp'd its burning brim.
And plagues like serpent-teeth her entrails tore;
Crime rush'd to ravage through a land of crime!
In the sack'd sepulchre caroused the mime;
On God's high altar sat Idolatry;
Before the harlot knelt the nation's prime,
And sons dragg'd fathers, fathers sons to die;
'Till Judgment girt the bow on its eternal thigh.

LXXVII.

This was our nature freed from God and king!
This was Rebellion's consummated dream!
Evil unchain'd,—all tortured, torturing;
The light of life, a wildering phantom-gleam,
A vapour of the hot and livid stream
Pour'd from the gory fount of Regicide;
The strife of madness,—fiery hearts, that teem
With shapes of guilt that but that den could hide;
Gnashings, and taunts, and groans, ascending wild and wide.

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LXXVIII.

And by that place of torment England sate
Like a bright spirit with unsleeping eyes,
Commission'd to keep watch at Hell's dark gate;
Hearing within its voice of agonies,
Seeing its smokes of restless torture rise,
Itself unstain'd; and on that fearful guard,
Still holding high communion with the skies;
Still on its brow the helmet-diadem starr'd,
The splendid plume still pure, the angel cheek unmarr'd.

LXXIX.

France was in dust,—a dying funeral pyre;
But from its embers sprang a sudden throne,
That round the kingdoms shot resistless fire.
In its pavilion sate a fearful one,
Alone in power, in gloomy guilt alone;
Stern, subtle, selfish;—cruelty his sword,
Apostacy upon his brow the crown,
He sat the homicidal empire's lord;
Heaven's instrument of woe, man's fear, ador'd, abhorr'd.

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LXXX.

His glance look'd o'er the nations as a field
For slaughter,—and his trumpet rang their knell;
For they were stain'd, and Faith's high temper'd shield
Sank from their grasp before the infidel.
Then did his heart with impious boastings swell;
Salmoneus! 'tis thy tale of mockery.
His meanest thought was might and miracle,
His idlest word an omen from on high,
And France, a ready slave, re-echoed all the lie.

LXXXI.

But rushing from its clouds, a viewless grasp
Seized the impostor in his car of flame,
And cleft the crown, and tore the vesture's clasp,
And show'd him as he was!—The nations came
Around in laughter stern, and lofty shame,
To see the tyrant bend his naked brow,
Fawning for abject life,—the tiger tame—
Dragging his chains,—the rabble's vagrant show,
Licking the dust before his first, last, noblest foe.

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LXXXII.

Was this the work of man? Eternal King,
Thou hearer of the orphan's midnight cry!
What tribute shall the ransom'd empires bring
For that new life of life, for Liberty.
Earth had been one wide dungeon but for thee,
And man had lived in woe, in woe had died.
In vain the mighty hills, the surging sea,
Where could the victim from the oppressor hide,
When all her regions lay beneath one iron stride?

LXXXIII.

The veil is rent above us. 'Twas a word
Omnipotent, which check'd that final hour.
It summon'd not the faithful warrior's sword;
The world stood hush'd at its descending power.
Then follow'd its fierce armies, cloud and shower,
The hail that shot its arrows from on high,
The blast that on the atheist host burn'd frore,
The storm that roll'd like midnight on the sky,
To make the deadly sheet in which their limbs must lie.

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LXXXIV.

Magnificence of ruin! what has time
In all it ever gazed upon of war,
Of the wild rage of storm, or deadly clime,
Seen, with that battle's vengeance to compare?
How glorious shone the invader's pomp afar?
Like pamper'd lions from the spoil they came;
The land before them silence and despair,
The land behind them massacre and flame;
Blood will have tenfold blood.—What are they now? a name.

LXXXV.

Homeward by hundred thousands, column deep,
Broad square, loose squadron, rolling like the flood
When mighty torrents from their channels leap,
Rush'd through the land the haughty multitude,
Billow on endless billow; on through wood,
O'er rugged hill, down sunless, marshy vale,
The death-devoted moved, to clangor rude
Of drum and horn and dissonant clash of mail,
Glancing disastrous light before that sun-beam pale.

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LXXXVI.

Again they reached thee, Borodino! still
Upon the loaded soil the carnage lay,
The human harvest, now stark, stiff and chill,
Friend, foe, stretch'd thick together, clay to clay;
In vain the startled legions burst away;
The land was all one naked sepulchre,
The shrinking eye still glanced on grim decay,
Still did the hoof and wheel their passage tear
Through cloven helms and arms, and corpses mould'ring drear.

LXXXVII.

The field was as they left it; fosse and fort
Steaming with slaughter still, but desolate,—
The cannon flung dismantled by its porte;
Each knew the mound, the black ravine whose strait
Was won and lost, and throng'd with dead, till fate
Had fixed upon the victor—half undone.
There was the hill, from which their eyes elate
Had seen the burst of Moscow's golden zone;
But death was at their heels, they shudder'd and rush'd on.

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LXXXVIII.

The hour of vengeance strikes. Hark to the gale!
As it bursts hollow through the rolling clouds,
That from the north in sullen grandeur sail
Like floating Alps. Advancing darkness broods
Upon the wild horizon, and the woods,
Now sinking into brambles, echo shrill,
As the gust sweeps them, and those upper floods
Shoot on their leafless boughs the sleet drops chill,
That on the hurrying crowds in freezing showers distil.

LXXXIX.

They reach the Wilderness! The majesty
Of solitude is spread before their gaze,
Stern nakedness,—dark earth, and wrathful sky.
If ruins were there, they long had ceased to blaze;
If blood was shed, the ground no more betrays
Even by a skeleton the crime of man;
Behind them rolls the deep and drenching haze
Wrapping their rear in night, before their van
The struggling day-light shows the unmeasur'd desert wan.

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XC.

Still on they sweep, as if their hurrying march
Could bear them from the rushing of his wheel
Whose chariot is the whirlwind. Heaven's clear arch
At once is covered with a livid veil,
In mixed and fighting heaps the deep clouds reel,
Upon the dense horizon hangs the sun,
In sanguine light, an orb of burning steel;
The snows wheel down through twilight, thick and dun;
Now tremble men of blood, the Judgment has begun!

XCI.

The trumpet of the northern winds has blown,
And it is answer'd by the dying roar
Of armies on that boundless field o'erthrown:
Now in the awful gusts the desert hoar
Is tempested, a sea without a shore,
Lifting its feathery waves. The legions fly;
Volley on volley, down the hailstones pour;—
Blind, famish'd, frozen, mad, the wanderers die,
And dying, hear the storm but wilder thunder by.

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XCII.

Such is the hand of heaven! A human blow
Had crush'd them in the fight, or flung the chain,
Round them where Moscow's stately towers were low,
And all be still'd. But Thou! thy battle plain
Was a whole empire; that devoted train
Must war from day to day with storm and gloom,
(Man following, like the wolves, to rend the slain,)
Must lie from night to night as in a tomb,
Must fly, toil, bleed for home; yet never see that home.

XCIII.

The despot 'scaped; for his was yet to show
What mimes may play ambition's haughtiest part,
To show the recreant branded on his brow,
Whose noblest art was but the slaughterer's art;
Lest future villains from the mire should start,
And rave, and slay, and dare to call it fame.
Behold him now, the man without a heart,
Him of the battles,—him the soul of flame,—
Scorn'd, banish'd, chain'd for life; and glad to live in shame.

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XCIV.

He's gone!—The world in arms pronounced his ban,
His wand is plunged ten thousand fathoms deep:
The sword of wrath has broke his talisman;
And now, to his foul tomb content to creep,
The outcast wanders on the loneliest steep,
That ever whiten'd to the ocean wave;
A monument of blasted guilt, to weep,
If his hard eye can weep, the price he gave,
To meet that spot at last,—his prison and his grave.

XCV.

But he has perish'd, as the broken surge
That at his feet now dies along the shore:
The scourge's work fulfill'd—the gory scourge
Is flung abhorr'd away—his world is o'er.
Fool! see thy emblem; where with rush and roar
The ocean-pillar whirls to meet the sky,
Ploughing with giant speed the waters hoar,
Fear to the distant, ruin to the nigh;
It bursts—it sinks—'tis gone—its very echoes die.

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XCVI.

Earth shook with that wild empire's overthrow;
And the foundations, that as fate seem'd deep,
Are dust—and England gave the final blow.
France rush'd like lava from the mountain's steep,
But England met it with the ocean's sweep,
And o'er it roll'd in towering majesty,
Leaving its burning mass, a gloomy heap.
Days of our toil and triumph! ye shall die—
But on the self same pile with man, and memory!

XCVII.

Monarch of England! in our trial-hour,
Thy prayer was to thy people shield and sword;
Thy secret spirit was a living power.
Like his who on the mountain's brow adored
When round its base the pagan battle roar'd;
The lifting of thy hands was victory;
A deadlier host around our mountain pour'd.
Now dust and ashes on their standards lie,
Why was that triumph hid from thy paternal eye!

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XCVIII.

It was in mercy that the veil was spread!
Thou didst not see the blossoms of thy throne,
Mother and infant, on one dying bed.
Thou didst not weep upon the sullen stone
That hid thy queen; thy more than princely son;
High dreams were glowing round thy lonely tower;
Still lived to thee each loved and parted one;
Till on thine eye-ball burst th'immortal hour,
And the dead met thy gaze in angel light and power.

XCIX.

We talk not of the parting rites—the pomp—
Our heart above our Father's grave decays.
Yet all was regal there; the silver tromp,
The proud procession through the Gothic maze,
The silken banner, thousand torches' blaze,
Gilding the painted pane, and imaged stone;
The chapel's deeper glow,—the cresset's rays,
Like diamonds on the wall of velvet strown;
And, flashing from the roof, the helm, and gonfalon.

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C.

Yet still the thought is hallow'd; and the train
Of solemn memories o'er the mind will come
With long and lofty pleasure, touch'd by pain.
I hear the anthem; now, as in the tomb,
Dying away;—then, through the upper gloom
Roll'd, like the Judgment thunders from the cloud,
Above that deep and gorgeous catacomb,
Where sat the nation's mightiest, pale, and proud,
Throned in their dim alcoves, each fix'd as in his shroud.

CI.

Still lives the vision of the kingly hall,
The noble kneeling in his canopy,
The prelate in his sculptured, shadowy stall,
The knight beneath his falchion glittering high,
All bending on a central pall the eye,
Where melancholy gleams a crown of gold,
An empty crown.—'Tis sinking, silently,
'Tis gone! yet does the living world not hold
A purer heart than now beneath that crown is cold.

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CII.

And ye ethereal ministrants, whose eyes
Night veils not; splendid watchers of our sphere;
Heard ye not rising to your solemn skies
From the land's widest limits voices drear,
As if in each that moment sank the bier?
From mount and shore roll'd up the mighty peal,
Then died!—and all was death-like on the ear.
But it was gone afar, the ocean's swell
Round the hush'd world had borne its noblest monarch's knell.

CIII.

Raise we his monument! what giant pile
Shall honour him to far posterity?
His monument shall be his ocean-isle,
The voice of his redeeming thunders be
His epitaph upon the silver sea.
And million spirits from whose necks he tore
The fetter, and made soul and body free;
And unborn millions from earth's farthest shore
Shall bless the Christian King, till the last sun is o'er.

THE END.

Place Louis Quinze.

149

THE DEATH OF LEONIDAS.

Αρης δ'ουκ αγαθων φειδεται. ΑΝΑΚΡ.

It was the wild midnight,—
A storm was on the sky;
The lightning gave its light,
And the thunder echoed by.

The torrent swept the glen,
The ocean lash'd the shore;
Then rose the Spartan men,
To make their bed in gore!

150

Swift from the deluged ground
Three hundred took the shield;
Then, silent, gather'd round
The Leader of the field.

He spoke no warrior-word,
He bade no trumpet blow;
But the signal-thunder roar'd,
And they rush'd upon the foe.

The fiery element
Show'd, with one mighty gleam,
Rampart, and flag, and tent,
Like the spectres of a dream.

All up the mountain side,
All down the woody vale,
All by the rolling tide
Waved the Persian banners pale.

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And King Leonidas,
Among the slumbering band,
Sprang foremost from the pass,
Like the lightning's living brand.

Then double darkness fell,
And the forest ceased its moan:
But there came a clash of steel,
And a distant, dying groan.

Anon, a trumpet blew,
And a fiery sheet burst high,
That o'er the midnight threw
A blood-red canopy.

A host glared on the hill;
A host glared by the bay;
But the Greeks rush'd onwards still,
Like leopards in their play.

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The air was all a yell,
And the earth was all a flame,
Where the Spartan's bloody steel
On the silken turbans came.

And still the Greek rush'd on
Beneath the fiery fold,
Till, like a rising sun,
Shone Xerxes' tent of gold.

They found a royal feast,
His midnight banquet, there!
And the treasures of the East
Lay beneath the Doric spear.

Then sat to the repast
The bravest of the brave!
That feast must be their last,
That spot must be their grave.

153

They pledged old Sparta's name
In cups of Syrian wine,
And the warrior's deathless fame
Was sung in strains divine.

They took the rose-wreath'd lyres
From eunuch and from slave,
And taught the languid wires
The sounds that Freedom gave.

But now the morning star
Crown'd Œta's twilight brow;
And the Persian horn of war
From the hills began to blow.

Up rose the glorious rank,
To Greece one cup pour'd high,—
Then, hand in hand, they drank
“To Immortality!”

154

Fear on King Xerxes fell,
When, like spirits from the tomb,
With shout and trumpet-knell,
He saw the warriors come.

But down swept all his power,
With chariot and with charge;
Down pour'd the arrowy shower,
Till sank the Dorian's targe.

They march'd within the tent,
With all their strength unstrung;
To Greece one look they sent,
Then on high their torches flung.

To heaven the blaze uproll'd,
Like a mighty altar-fire;
And the Persians' gems and gold
Were the Grecians' funeral pyre.

155

Their king sat on the throne,
His captains by his side,
While the flame rush'd roaring on,
And their pæan loud replied!

Thus fought the Greek of old!
Thus will he fight again!
Shall not the self-same mould
Bring forth the self-same men?

156

ON THE BUST OF THE LATE QUEEN OF PRUSSIA, IN THE KING'S CHAMBER AT BERLIN, 1812.

Thy day of agony is o'er!
Thou'rt angel, and shalt weep no more:
In fortune's last extremity,
Princess, 'twas well for thee to die.
Death calms the wretched, frees the slave;
Can insult follow to the grave?
The tyrant now may taunt and scorn,
Thy spirit can no more be torn.
Oh, for the hour a Prussian's steel
Shall teach his callous heart to feel!

157

Thy cheek is still before me—pale
As the last leaf on Autumn's gale;
Then lit with one, swift, burning tinge,
As o'er it, from thine eyes' dark fringe,
Fell, drop by drop, the tears of pain,
At some new galling of thy chain;
Some slighting, sullen courtesy
Of him who could not honour thee.
And this the end of birth and bloom;
Tears, terrors, exile, and the tomb!—
And there is One, who, hour by hour,
Has wept upon thee, broken flower!
Pierced to the soul with every sting
That Fate could point against a King.
The Man had one more misery
To meet—and met it, losing thee.
Image of beauty, breathing stone,
Here shrined so lovely, and so lone;
Comes he not here from restless sleep
To weep, as hearts alone can weep!

158

Thy spell is on me too:—my eye
Is caught, fix'd, fill'd, unconscious why;
'Tis not thy more than regal brow;
Thy more than beauty; more than woe;
'Tis the deep grace, that seems to wind
O'er all,—the relique of thy mind!
But the dark heart that dug thy grave
Shall die a recreant and a slave:
Not where his routed legions lie;
He must not die, as brave men die!
But weary, wither'd, lost,—his name
Earth's scorn, the common mark for shame;
From fame, hope, empire, mankind driven,
As sure as there's a Power in Heaven.
That sin's not made to be forgiven!

159

NOON.

“Οικια τεττιγων, ενδιοι ακρεμονες.”

Come, ye brown oaks, and stoop your heavy boughs,
Making sweet eve around my sultry brows!
Wave your white beauty, lilies; hyacinths sigh;
And, woodbine, from your blossom'd canopy,
Stirring the smoothness of this quiet stream,
Shed on my eyes some deep, Elysian dream.
And come, thou young and silken-pinion'd Wind,
That the pale, virgin May, sends forth to find
Her flowers, in Winter's frozen bosom sleeping;
Wing round this leafy bed, in whispers creeping
Like softest music on my slumb'ring ear;
Until the murmur of the grasshopper,

160

And the fresh odours of the rose's breath,
Tell me that Day is faint, and nigh to death.
And the small stars are waking, one by one;
And to fair Thetis' couch the weary Sun is gone!

161

THE PEN.

FROM THE GREEK OF TZETZES.

“Ημην αχρειον καλαμος φυτον.” κ. τ. λ.

I was an useless thing, a lonely reed!
No blossom hung its beauty on the weed.
Alike in summer's sun and winter's gloom,
I sigh'd no fragrance, and I wore no bloom.
No cluster wreath'd me;—day and night I pined
On the wild moor, and wither'd in the wind.
At length a wanderer found me.—From my side
He smooth'd the pale decaying leaves, and dyed
My lips in Helicon! From that high hour
I spoke!—My words were flame and living power!

162

And there was sweetness round me,—never fell
Eve's sweeter dews upon the lily's bell.
I shone!—night died!—as if a trumpet call'd,
Man's spirit rose, pure, fiery, disenthrall'd!
Tyrants of earth, ye saw your light decline,
When I stood forth, a wonder and a sign!
To me the iron sceptre was a wand,
The roar of nations peal'd at my command;
To me the dungeon, sword, and scourge, were vain,
I smote the smiter, and I broke the chain:
Or towering o'er them all, without a plume,
I pierced the purple air, the tempest's gloom;
Till burst th'Olympian splendours on my eye,
Stars, temples, thrones, and gods,—Infinity!

163

THE POET'S HOUR.

When day is done, and clouds are low,
And flowers are honey-dew,
And Hesper's lamp begins to glow
Along the western blue.
And homeward wing the turtle-doves,
Then comes the hour the poet loves.

For in the dimness curtain'd round,
He hears the echoes all
Of rosy vale, or grassy mound,
Or distant waterfall;
And shapes are on his dreaming sight,
That keep their beauty for the night.

164

And still, as shakes the sudden breeze
The forest's deepening shade,
He hears on Tuscan evening seas
The silver serenade:
Or, to the field of battle borne,
Swells at the sound of trump and horn.

The star that peeps the leaves between,
To him is but the light
That, from some lady's bower of green,
Shines to her pilgrim knight;
Who feels her spell around him twine,
And hastens home from Palestine.

Or, if some wand'ring peasant's song
Come sweeten'd on the gale,
He sees the cloister's saintly throng;
The crosier, cross, and veil—
Or hears the vespers of the nun,
World-weary, lovely, and undone.

165

And thus he thinks the hour away
In sweet, unworldly folly;
And loves to see the shades of gray,
That feed his melancholy:
Finding sweet speech and thought in all,
Star, leaf, wind, song, and waterfall!

166

CZERNI GEORGE.

[_]

This man was one of the bold creations of wild countries and troubled times; beings of impetuous courage, iron strength, original talent, and doubtful morality. Civilization levels and subdues the inequalities of the general mind; barbarism shows, with the desolation, the grandeur of the wilderness,—the dwarfed and the gigantic side by side, a thousand diminished and decaying productions overshadowed by one mighty effort of savage fertility.

Georges Petrowich was descended from a family of Servian nobles. His habitual name of Czerni (black) was given probably from the colour of his hair. His

167

daring spirit first exhibited itself in an act of personal violence. When a boy, and ordered by a Turk to stand out of his way, or have his brains blown out, he shot the Turk on the spot. Hatred of the oppressors of his country was probably mingled here with individual temper. Czerni George took immediate refuge in Transylvania, and entered the Austrian service, where he was made a non-commissioned officer. He subsequently quarrelled with his captain, challenged, killed him; and fled to Servia. He was now but twenty-five, yet he raised an insurrection; fought the Turks with remorseless hostility; by signal gallantry, perseverance, and talent embodied an army of his countrymen; bore down the Turks before him, besieged Belgrade, and on the 1st of December, 1806, forced it to capitulate.

He was now master of a kingdom, was proclaimed generalissimo of Servia, repelled an attempt of the senate of nobles and ecclesiastics to repossess the government, and by proclamation declared himself “Supreme.”

168

The Mussulman power was awakened by this proximity of triumphant opposition, and an army of 50,000 men passed the Servian frontier. Czerni fought long and desperately on the banks of the Saave, but his small population gave way before the mass of the Turkish power. At the Treaty of 1812, between Russia and the Porte, Servia acknowledged herself tributary to the Sultan. Czerni retired to Russia, and lived at Kissonoff, in Bessarabia. In 1817, he had the rashness to return to Servia. He was taken in disguise near Belgrade, and immediately beheaded by order of the Pashaw. The object of his return is unascertained; it was said to be the possession of some treasure hidden during his day of success: it was supposed by the Turks to be an attempt to feel his way to massacre once more. It might have been urged by the restlessness of a vigorous mind weary of inactivity; or by the nobler impulse of giving independence to his country, at a time when Europe was exulting in the overthrow of the French Empire.

169

His appearance was striking and singular. He was boldly formed, and above the general stature. But the extraordinary length of his physiognomy, his sunken eyes, and his bald forehead, bound with a single black tress of hair, gave him a look rather Asiatic than European. It was his custom to sit in silence for hours together; he could neither read nor write, but he was a great warrior, and, for the time, a deliverer of his country.

170

'Twas noon! a blood-red banner play'd
Above thy rampart porte, Belgrade;
From time to time the gong's deep swell
Rose thundering from the citadel;
And soon the trampling charger's din
Told of some mustering pomp within.
But all without was still and drear,
The long streets wore the hue of fear,
All desert, but where some quick eye
Peer'd from the curtain'd gallery.
Or crouching slow from roof to roof,
The Servian glanced, then shrank aloof,

171

Eager, yet dreading to look on
The business to be that day done.
The din grew louder, crowding feet
Seem'd rushing to the central street;
'Twas fill'd; the city's idle brood
Scatter'd before, few, haggard, rude:
Then come the Spahis bounding on
With kettle-drum and gonfalon;
And ever, at the cymbal's clash,
Upshook their spears the sudden flash,
Till, like a shatter'd, sable sail,
Wheel'd o'er their rear the black horse-tail,
All hurrying on, like men who yield,
Or men who seek, some final field.

They lead a captive; the Pashaw
From his large eye draws back with awe;
All tongues are silent in the group,
Who round that fearful stranger troop:
He still has homage, though his hands
Are straining in a felon's bands.

172

No Moslem he; his brow is bare,
Save one wild tress of raven hair,
Like a black serpent deeply bound,
Where once sat Servia's golden round.
His neck bends low, and many a stain
Of blood shows how it feels the chain;
A peasant's robe is o'er him flung,
A swordless sheath beside him hung;
He sits a charger, but a slave
Now holds the bridle of the brave.

And now they line the palace-square,
A splendid sight, as noon's full glare
Pours on their proud caparison,
Arms rough with gold and dazzling stone,
Horse-nets, and shawls of Indian dye,
O'er brows of savage majesty.
But where's the fetter'd rider now?
A flag above, a block below,
An Ethiop headsman low'ring near,
Show where must close his stern career.

173

A thousand eyes are fix'd to mark
The fading of his eye's deep spark,
The quicken'd heaving of his breast;
But all within it is at rest:
There is no quivering nerve; his brow
Scarce bent upon the crowd below,
He stands in settled, stately gloom,
A warrior's statue on his tomb.

A trumpet rang;—the turban'd line
Clash'd up their spears, the headsman's sign.
Then, like the iron in the forge,
Blazed thy dark visage, Czerni George!
He knew that trumpet's Turkish wail,
His guide through many a forest vale,
When, scattering like the hunted deer,
The Moslem felt his early spear;
He heard it when the Servian targe
Broke down the Delhi's desperate charge,
And o'er the flight his scimitar
Was like the flashing of a star:

174

That day, his courser to the knee
Was bathed in blood, and Servia free!
That day, before he sheathed his blade,
He stood a sovereign in Belgrade;
The field, the throne were on that eye,
Which wander'd now so wild and high.

The hour had waned; the sunbeam fell
Full on the palace pinnacle,
The golden crescent on its spire
Beam'd o'er a cross! his eye shot fire;
That cross was o'er the crescent set,
The day he won the coronet.
He dash'd away a tear of pride,
His hand was darted to his side,
No sword was there:—a bitter smile
Told the stern spirit's final thrill;
Yet all not agony; afar,
Mark'd he no cloud of northern war?
Swell'd on his prophet ear no clang
Of tribes that to their saddles sprang?

175

No Russian cannon's heavy hail
In vengeance smiting the Serail?
The whole was but a moment's trance,
That 'scaped the turban'd rabble's glance;
A sigh, a stride, a stamp the whole,
Time measures not the tides of soul.
He was absorb'd in dreams, not saw
The hurried glare of the Pashaw;
Nor saw the headsman's backward leap,
To give his axe the wider sweep.
Down came the blow;—the self-same smile
Was lingering on the dead lip still,
When 'mid the train the pikeman bore
The bloody head of the Pandour.

The night was wild, the atabal
Scarce echoed on the rampart wall;
Scarce heard the shrinking centinel,
The night-horn in that tempest's yell.
But forms, as shot the lightning's glare,
Stole silent through that palace-square,

176

And thick and dim a weeping group
Seem'd o'er its central spot to stoop.
The storm a moment paused, the moon
Broad from a hurrying cloud-rift shone;
It shone upon a headless trunk,
Raised in their arms; the moonbeam sunk,
And all was dimness; but the beat
Came sudden as of parting feet,
And sweet and solemn voices pined
In the low lapses of the wind.
'Twas like the hymn, when soldiers bear
A soldier to his sepulchre.

The lightning threw a shaft below,
The stately square was desert now.
Yet far, as far as eye could strain,
Was seen the remnant of a train;
A wavering shadow of a crowd,
That round some noble burden bow'd.
'Twas gone, and all was night once more,
Wild rain, and whirlwind's doubled roar.

177

THE ANGEL OF THE WORLD.

AN ARABIAN TALE.

183

I

There's glory on thy mountains, proud Bengal,
When on their temples bursts the morning sun!
There's glory on thy marble-tower'd wall,
Proud Ispahan, beneath his burning noon!
There's glory—when his golden course is done,
Proud Istamboul, upon thy waters blue!
But fall'n Damascus, thine was beauty's throne,
In morn, and noon, and evening's purple dew,
Of all from Ocean's marge to mighty Himmalu.

184

II

East of the city stands a lofty mount,
Its brow with lightning delved and rent in sunder;
And through the fragments rolls a little fount,
Whose channel bears the blast of fire and thunder;
And there has many a pilgrim come to wonder;
For there are flowers unnumber'd blossoming,
With but the bare and calcined marble under;
Yet in all Asia no such colours spring,
No perfumes rich as in that mountain's rocky ring.

III

And some who pray'd the night out on the hill,
Have said they heard—unless it was their dream,
Or the mere murmur of the babbling rill,—
Just as the morn-star shot its first slant beam,
A sound of music, such as they might deem
The song of spirits—that would sometimes sail
Close to their ear, a deep, delicious stream,
Then sweep away, and die with a low wail;
Then come again, and thus, till Lucifer was pale.

185

IV

And some, but bolder still, had dared to turn
That soil of mystery for hidden gold;
But saw strange, stifling blazes round them burn,
And died:—by few that venturous tale was told.
And wealth was found; yet, as the pilgrims hold,
Though it was glorious on the mountain's brow,
Brought to the plain it crumbled into mould,
The diamonds melted in the hand like snow;
So none molest that spot for gems or ingots now.

V

But one, and ever after, round the hill
He stray'd:—they said a meteor scorch'd his sight;
Blind, mad, a warning of Heaven's fearful will.
'Twas on the sacred evening of “The Flight,”
His spade turn'd up a shaft of marble white,
Fragment of some kiosk, the chapiter
A crystal circle, but at morn's first light
Rich forms began within it to appear,
Sceptred and wing'd, and then, it sank in water clear.

186

VI

Yet once upon that guarded mount, no foot
But of the Moslem true might press a flower,
And of them none, but with some solemn suit
Beyond man's help, might venture near the bower:
For, in its shade, in beauty and in power,
For judgement sat the Angel of the World:
Sent by the prophet, till the destined hour
That saw in dust Arabia's idols hurl'd,
Then to the skies again his wing should be unfurl'd.

VII

It came at last. It came with trumpets' sounding,
It came with thunders of the atabal,
And warrior shouts, and Arab chargers' bounding,
The Sacred Standard crown'd Medina's wall!
From palace roof, and minaret's golden ball,
Ten thousand emerald banners floated free,
Beneath, like sun-beams, through the gateway tall,
The Emirs led their steel-mail'd chivalry,
And the whole city rang with sports and soldier glee.

187

VIII

This was the eve of eves, the end of war,
Beginning of Dominion, first of Time!
When, swifter than the shooting of a star,
Mohammed saw the “Vision's” pomps sublime;
Swept o'er the rainbow'd sea—the fiery clime,
Heard from the throne its will in thunders roll'd;
Then glancing on our world of woe and crime,
Saw from Arabia's sands his banner's fold
Wave o'er the brighten'd globe its sacred, conquering gold.

IX

The sun was slowly sinking to the west,
Pavilion'd with a thousand glorious dyes;
The turtle-doves were winging to the nest
Along the mountain's soft declivities;
The fresher breath of flowers began to rise,
Like incense, to that sweet departing sun;
Faint as the hum of bees the city's cries:
A moment, and the lingering disk was gone;
Then were the Angel's task on earth's dim orbit done.

188

X

Oft had he gazed upon that lovely vale,
But never gazed with gladness such as now;
When on Damascus' roofs and turrets pale
He saw the solemn sunlight's fainter glow,
With joy he heard the Imauns' voices flow
Like breath of silver trumpets on the air;
The vintagers' sweet song, the camels' low,
As home they stalk'd from pasture, pair by pair,
Flinging their shadows tall in the steep sunset glare.

XI

Then at his sceptre's wave, a rush of plumes
Shook the thick dew-drops from the roses' dyes;
And, as embodying of their waked perfumes,
A crowd of lovely forms, with lightning eyes,
And flower-crown'd hair, and cheeks of Paradise,
Circled the bower of beauty on the wing;
And all the grove was rich with symphonies
Of seeming flute, and horn, and golden string,
That slowly rose, and o'er the Mount hung hovering.

189

XII

The Angel's flashing eyes were on the vault,
That now with lamps of diamond all was hung;
His mighty wings like tissues heavenly-wrought,
Upon the bosom of the air were hung.
The solemn hymn's last harmonies were sung,
The sun was couching on the distant zone.
“Farewell” was breathing on the Angel's tongue;—
He glanced below. There stood a suppliant one!
The impatient Angel sank, in wrath, upon his throne.

XIII

Yet all was quickly sooth'd,—“this labour past,
“His coronet of tenfold light was won.”
His glance again upon the form was cast,
That now seem'd dying on the dazzling stone;
He bade it rise and speak. The solemn tone
Of Earth's high Sovereign mingled joy with fear,
As summer vales of rose by lightning shown;
As the night-fountain in the desert drear;
His voice seem'd sudden life to that fall'n suppliant's ear.

190

XIV

The form arose—the face was in a veil,
The voice was low, and often check'd with sighs;
The tale it utter'd was a simple tale;
“A vow to close a dying parent's eyes,
Had brought its weary steps from Tripolis;
The Arab in the Syrian mountains lay,
The caravan was made the robber's prize,
The pilgrim's little wealth was swept away,
Man's help was vain.” Here sank the voice in soft decay.

XV

“And this is Earth!” the Angel frowning said;
And from the ground he took a matchless gem,
And flung it to the mourner, then outspread
His pinions, like the lightning's rushing beam.
The pilgrim started at the diamond's gleam,
Glanced up in prayer, then, bending near the throne,
Shed the quick tears that from the bosom stream,
And tried to speak, but tears were there alone;
The pitying Angel said, “Be happy and begone.”

191

XVI

The weeper raised the veil; a ruby lip
First dawn'd: then glow'd the young cheek's deeper hue,
Yet delicate as roses when they dip
Their odorous blossoms in the morning dew.
Then beam'd the eyes, twin stars of living blue;
Half shaded by the curls of glossy hair,
That turn'd to golden as the light wind threw
Their clusters in the western golden glare.
Yet was her blue eye dim, for tears were standing there.

XVII

He look'd upon her, and her hurried gaze
Sought from his glance sweet refuge on the ground;
But o'er her cheek of beauty rush'd a blaze;
And, as the soul had felt some sudden wound,
Her bosom heaved above its silken bound.
He looked again; the cheek was deadly pale;
The bosom sank with one long sigh profound;
Yet still one lily hand upheld her veil,
And still one press'd her heart—that sigh told all its tale.

192

XVIII

She stoop'd, and from the thicket pluck'd a flower,
And fondly kiss'd, and then with feeble hand
She laid it on the footstool of the bower;
Such was the ancient custom of the land.
Her sighs were richer than the rose they fann'd;
The breezes swept it to the Angel's feet;
Yet even that sweet slight boon, 'twas Heaven's command,
He must not touch, from her though doubly sweet,
No earthly gift must stain that hallow'd judgment-seat.

XIX

Still lay the flower upon the splendid spot,
The Pilgrim turn'd away, as smote with shame;
Her eye a glance of self-upbraiding shot;
'Twas in his soul, a shaft of living flame.
Then bow'd the humbled one, and bless'd his name,
Cross'd her white arms, and slowly bade farewell.
A sudden faintness o'er the Angel came;
The voice rose sweet and solemn as a spell,
She bow'd her face to earth, and o'er it dropp'd her veil.

193

XX

Beauty, what art thou, that thy slightest gaze
Can make the spirit from its centre roll;
Its whole long course, a sad and shadowy maze?
Thou midnight or thou noontide of the soul;
One glorious vision lighting up the whole
Of the wide world; or one deep, wild desire,
By day and night consuming, sad and sole;
Till Hope, Pride, Genius, nay, till Love's own fire,
Desert the weary heart, a cold and mouldering pyre.

XXI

Enchanted sleep, yet full of deadly dreams;
Companionship divine, stern solitude;
Thou serpent, colour'd with the brightest gleams
That e'er hid poison, making hearts thy food;
Woe to the heart that lets thee once intrude,
Victim of visions that life's purpose steal,
Till the whole struggling nature lies subdued,
Bleeding with wounds the grave alone must heal.
Proud Angel, was it thine that mortal woe to feel?

194

XXII

Still knelt the pilgrim cover'd with her veil,
But all her beauty living on his eye;
Still hyacinth the clustering ringlets fell
Wreathing her forehead's polish'd ivory;
Her cheek unseen still wore the rose-bud's dye;
She sigh'd; he heard the sigh beside him swell,
He glanced around—no Spirit hover'd nigh—
Touch'd the fall'n flower, and blushing, sigh'd “farewell.”
What sound has stunn'd his ear? A sudden thunder-peal.

XXIII

He look'd on heaven, 'twas calm, but in the vale
A creeping mist had girt the mountain round,
Making the golden minarets glimmer pale;
It scaled the mount,—the feeble day was drown'd.
The sky was with its livid hue embrown'd,
But soon the vapours grew a circling sea,
Reflecting lovely from its blue profound
Mountain, and crimson cloud, and blossom'd tree;
Another heaven and earth in bright tranquillity.

195

XXIV

And on its bosom swam a small chaloupe,
That like a wild swan sported on the tide.
The silken sail that canopied its poop
Show'd one that look'd an Houri in her pride;
Anon came spurring up the mountain's side
A warrior Moslem all in glittering mail,
That to his country's doubtful battle hied.
He saw the form, he heard the tempter's tale,
And answered with his own: for beauty will prevail.

XXV

But now in storm uprose the vast mirage;
Where sits she now who tempted him to roam?
How shall the skiff with that wild sea engage!
In vain the quivering helm is turn'd to home.
Dark'ning above the piles of tumbling foam,
Rushes a shape of woe, and through the roar
Peals in the warrior's ear a voice of doom.
Down plunges the chaloupe.—The storm is o'er.
Heavy and slow the corpse rolls onward to the shore.

196

XXVI

The Angel's heart was smote—but that touch'd flower,
Now opening, breathed such fragrance subtly sweet,
He felt it strangely chain him to the bower.
He dared not then that pilgrim's eye to meet,
But gazed upon the small unsandal'd feet
Shining like silver on the floor of rose;
At length he raised his glance;—the veil's light net
Had floated backward from her pencil'd brows,
Her eye was fix'd on Heaven, in sad, sublime repose.

XXVII

A simple Syrian lyre was on her breast,
And on her crimson lip was murmuring
A village strain, that in the day's sweet rest
Is heard in Araby round many a spring,
When down the twilight vales the maidens bring
The flocks to some old patriarchal well;
Or where beneath the palms some desert-king
Lies, with his tribe around him as they fell!
The thunder burst again; a long, deep, crashing peal.

197

XXVIII

The Angel heard it not; as round the range
Of the blue hill-tops roar'd the volley on,
Uttering its voice with wild, aerial change;
Now sinking in a deep and distant moan,
Like the last echo of a host o'erthrown;
Then rushing with new vengeance down again,
Shooting the fiery flash and thunder-stone;
Till flamed, like funeral pyres, the mountain chain.
The Angel heard it not; its wisdom all was vain.

XXIX

He heard not even the strain, though it had changed
From the calm sweetness of the holy hymn.
His thoughts from depth to depth unconscious ranged,
Yet all within was dizzy, strange, and dim;
A mist seem'd spreading between heaven and him;
He sat absorb'd in dreams;—a searching tone
Came on his ear, oh how her dark eyes swim
Who breathed that echo of a heart undone,
The song of early joys, delicious, dear, and gone!

198

XXX

Again it changed.—But, now 'twas wild and grand,
The praise of hearts that scorn the world's control,
Disdaining all but Love's delicious band,
The chain of gold and flowers, the tie of soul.
Again strange paleness o'er her beauty stole,
She glanced above, then stoop'd her glowing eye,
Blue as the star that glitter'd by the pole;
One tear-drop gleam'd, she dash'd it quickly by,
And dropp'd the lyre, and turn'd—as if she turn'd to die.

XXXI

The night-breeze from the mountains had begun;
And as it wing'd among the clouds of even,
Where, like a routed king, the Sultan Sun
Still struggled on the fiery verge of heaven;
Their volumes in ten thousand shapes were driven;
Spreading away in boundless palace halls,
Whose lights from gold and emerald lamps were given;
Or airy citadels and battled walls;
Or sunk in valleys sweet, with silver waterfalls.

199

XXXII

But, for those sights of heaven the Angel's heart
Was all unsettled: and a bitter sigh
Burst from his burning lip, and with a start
He cast upon the earth his conscious eye.
The whole horizon from that summit high
Spread out in vision, from the pallid line
Where old Palmyra's pomps in ruin lie,
Gilding the Arab sands, to where supine
The western lustre tinged thy spires, lost Palestine!

XXXIII

Yet, loveliest of the vision was the vale
That sloped beneath his own imperial bowers;
Sheeted with colours like an Indian mail,
A tapestry sweet of all sun-painted flowers,
Balsam, and clove, and jasmines scented showers,
And the red glory of the Persian rose,
Spreading in league on league around the towers,
Where, loved of Heaven, and hated of its foes,
The Queen of Cities shines, in calm and proud repose.

200

XXXIV

And still he gazed—and saw not that the eve
Was fading into night. A sudden thought
Struck to his dreaming heart, that made it heave;
Was he not there in Paradise?—that spot,
Was it not lovely as the lofty vault
That rose above him? In his native skies,
Could he be happy till his soul forgot,
Oh! how forget, the being whom his eyes
Loved as their light of light? He heard a tempest rise—

XXXV

Was it a dream? the vale at once was bare,
And o'er it hung a broad and sulphurous cloud:
The soil grew red and rifted with its glare;
Down to their roots the mountain cedars bow'd;
Along the ground a rapid vapour flow'd,
Yellow and pale, thick seam'd with streaks of flame.
Before it sprang the vulture from the shroud;
The lion bounded from it scared and tame;
Behind it, dark'ning heaven, the mighty whirlwind came.

201

XXXVI

Like a long tulip bed, across the plain
A caravan approach'd the evening well,
A long, deep mass of turban, plume, and vane;
And lovely came its distant, solemn swell
Of song, and pilgrim-horn, and camel-bell.
The sandy ocean rose before their eye,
In thunder on their bending host it fell
Ten thousand lips sent up one fearful cry;
The sound was still'd at once, beneath its wave they lie.

XXXVII

But, two escaped, that up the mountain sprung,
And those the dead men's treasure downwards drew;
One, with slow steps; but beautiful and young
Was she, who round his neck her white arms threw.
Away the tomb of sand like vapour flew.
There, naked lay the costly caravan,
A league of piles of silk and gems that threw
A rainbow light, and mid them stiff and wan,
Stretch'd by his camel's flank, their transient master, man.

202

XXXVIII

The statelier wand'rer from the height was won,
And cap and sash soon gleam'd with plunder'd gold.
But, now the Desert rose, in pillars dun,
Glowing with fire like iron in the mould,
That wings with fiery speed, recoil'd, sprang, roll'd;
Before them waned the moon's ascending phase,
The clouds above them shrank the redd'ning fold:
On rush'd the giant columns blaze on blaze,
The sacrilegious died, wrapp'd in the burning haze.

XXXIX

The Angel sat enthroned within a dome
Of alabaster raised on pillars slight,
Curtain'd with tissues of no earthly loom;
For spirits wove the web of blossoms bright,
Woof of all flowers that drink the morning light,
And with their beauty figured all the stone
In characters of mystery and might,
A more than mortal guard around the throne,
That in their tender shade one glorious diamond shone.

203

XL

And every bud round pedestal and plinth,
As fell the evening, turn'd a living gem.
Lighted its purple lamp the hyacinth,
The dahlia pour'd its thousand-colour'd gleam,
A ruby torch the wond'ring eye might deem
Hung on the brow of some night-watching tower,
Where upwards climb'd the broad magnolia's stem.
An urn of lovely lustre every flower,
Burning before the king of that illumined bower.

XLI

And nestling in that arbour's leafy twine,
From cedar's top to violet's lowly bell,
Were birds, now hush'd, of plumage all divine,
That, as the quivering radiance on them fell,
Shot back such hues as stain the orient shell,
Touching the deep, green shades with light from eyes
Jacinth, and jet, and blazing carbuncle,
And gold-dropt coronets, and wings of dyes
Bathed in the living streams of their own Paradise.

204

XLII

The Angel knew the warning of that storm;
But saw the shudd'ring Minstrel's step draw near,
And felt the whole deep witchery of her form;
Her sigh was music's echo to his ear;
He loved—and what has love to do with fear?
Now night had droop'd on earth her raven wing,
But in the arbour all was splendour clear;
And, like twin spirits in its charmed ring,
Shone that sweet child of earth and that star-diadem'd king.

XLIII

For, whether 'twas the light's unusual glow,
Or that some dazzling change had on her come;
Her look, though lovely still, was loftier now,
Her tender cheek was flush'd with brighter bloom;
Yet in her azure eyebeam gather'd gloom,
Like evening's clouds across its own blue star,
Then would a sudden flash its depths illume;
And wore she but the wing and gemm'd tiar,
She seem'd instinct with might to make the clouds her car.

205

XLIV

She slowly raised her arm, that, bright as snow,
Gleam'd like a rising meteor through the air,
Shedding white lustre on her turban'd brow;
And gazed on heaven, as wrapt in solemn prayer;
She still look'd woman, yet more proudly fair;
And as she stood and pointed to the sky,
With that fix'd look of loveliness and care,
The Angel thought, and check'd it with a sigh,
He saw some Spirit fallen from immortality.

XLV

The silent prayer was done; and now she moved
Faint to his footstool, and, upon her knee,
Besought her lord, if in his heaven they loved,
That, as she never more his face must see,
She there might pledge her heart's fidelity.
Then turn'd, and pluck'd a cluster from the vine,
And o'er a chalice waved it, with a sigh,
Then stoop'd the crystal cup before the shrine.
In wrath the Angel rose—the guilty draught was wine!

206

XLVI

She stood; she shrank; she totter'd. Down he sprang,
Clasp'd with one hand her waist, with one upheld
The vase—his ears with giddy murmurs rang;
His eye upon her dying cheek was spell'd;
Up to the brim the draught of evil swell'd
Like liquid rose, its odour touch'd his brain;
He knew his ruin, but his soul was quell'd;
He shudder'd—gazed upon her cheek again,
Press'd her pale lip, and to the last that cup did drain.

XLVII

Th'enchantress smiled, as still in some sweet dream,
Then waken'd in a long, delicious sigh,
And on the bending Spirit fix'd the beam
Of her deep, dewy, melancholy eye.
The undone Angel gave no more reply
Than hiding his pale forehead in the hair
That floated on her neck of ivory,
And breathless pressing, with her ringlets fair,
From his bright eyes the tears of passion and despair.

207

XLVIII

The heaven was one blue cope, inlaid with gems
Thick as the concave of a diamond mine,
But from the north now fly pale, phosphor beams,
That o'er the mount their quivering net entwine;
The smallest stars through that sweet lustre shine;
Then, like a routed host, its streamers fly:
Then, from the moony horizontal line
A surge of sudden glory floods the sky,
Ocean of purple waves, and melted lazuli.

XLIX

But wilder wonder smote their shrinking eyes:
A vapour plunged upon the vale from heaven,
Then, darkly gathering, tower'd of mountain size;
From its high crater column'd smokes were driven;
It heaved within, as if pent flames had striven
With mighty winds to burst their prison hold,
Till all the cloud-volcano's bulk was riven
With angry light, that seem'd in cataracts roll'd,
Silver, and sanguine steel, and streams of molten gold.

208

L

Then echoed on the winds a hollow roar,
An Earthquake groan, that told convulsion near:
Out rush'd the burthen of its burning core,
Myriads of fiery globes, as day-light clear.
The sky was fill'd with flashing sphere on sphere,
Shooting straight upward to the zenith's crown.
The stars were blasted in that splendour drear,
The land beneath in wild distinctness shone,
From Syria's yellow sands to Libanus' summit-stone.

LI

The storm is on the embattled clouds receding,
The purple streamers wander pale and thin,
But o'er the pole a fiercer flame is spreading,
Wheel within wheel of fire, and far within
Revolves a stooping splendour crystalline.
A throne;—but who the sitter on that throne!
The Angel knew the punisher of sin.
Check'd on his lip the self-upbraiding groan,
And clasp'd his dying love, and joy'd to be undone.

209

LII

And once, 'twas but a moment, on her cheek
He gave a glance, then sank his hurried eye,
And press'd it closer on her dazzling neck.
Yet, even in that swift gaze, he could espy
A look that made his heart's blood backwards fly.
Was it a dream? there echoed in his ear
A stinging tone—a laugh of mockery!
It was a dream—it must be. Oh! that fear,
When the heart longs to know, what it is death to hear.

LIII

He glanced again—her eye was upward still,
Fix'd on the stooping of that burning car;
But through his bosom shot an arrowy thrill,
To see its solemn, stern, unearthly glare;
She stood a statue of sublime despair,
But on her lip sat scorn.—His spirit froze,—
His footstep reel'd,—his wan lip gasp'd for air;
She felt his throb,—and o'er him stoop'd with brows
As evening sweet, and kiss'd him with a lip of rose.

210

LIV

Again she was all beauty, and they stood
Still fonder clasp'd, and gazing with the eye
Of famine gazing on the poison'd food
That it must feed on, or abstaining die.
There was between them now nor tear nor sigh;
Theirs was the deep communion of the soul;
Passion's absorbing, bitter luxury;
What was to them or heaven or earth, the whole
Was in that fatal spot, where they stood sad, and sole.

LV

The Minstrel first shook off the silent trance;
And in a voice sweet as the murmuring
Of summer streams beneath the moonlight's glance,
Besought the desperate one to spread the wing
Beyond the power of his vindictive king.
Slave to her slightest word, he raised his plume,
For life or death, he reck'd not which, to spring;
Nay, to confront the thunder and the gloom.
She wildly kiss'd his hand, and sank, as in a tomb.

211

LVI

The Angel sooth'd her, “No! let Justice wreak
Its wrath upon them both, or him alone.”
A flush of love's pure crimson lit her cheek;
She whisper'd, and his stoop'd ear drank the tone
With mad delight; “Oh there is one way, one,
To save us both. Are there not mighty words,
Graved on the magnet-throne where Solomon
Sits ever guarded by the genii swords,
To give thy servant wings, like her resplendent Lord's?”

LVII

This was the sin of sins! The first, last crime,
In earth and heaven, unnamed, unnameable;
This from his throne of light, before all time,
Had smitten Eblis, brightest, first that fell.
He started back.—“What urged him to rebel?
What led that soft seducer to his bower?
Could she have laid upon his soul that spell,
Young, lovely, fond; yet but an earthly flower?”—
But for that fatal cup, he had been free that hour.

212

LVIII

But still its draught was fever in his blood.
He caught the upward, humble, weeping gleam
Of woman's eye, by passion all subdued;
He sigh'd, and at his sigh he saw it beam:
Oh! the sweet frenzy of the lover's dream!
A moment's lingering, and they both must die.
The lightning round them shot a broader stream;
He felt her clasp his feet in agony;
He spoke the “Words of might”,—the thunder gave reply!

LIX

Away! away! the sky is one black cloud,
Shooting its lightnings down in spire on spire.
Around the mount its canopy is bow'd,
A fiery vault upraised on pillar'd fire;
The stars like lamps along its roof expire;
But through its centre bursts an orb of rays;
The Angel knew the Avenger in his ire!
The hill-top smoked beneath the stooping blaze,
The culprits dared not there their guilty glances raise.

213

LX

And words were utter'd from that whirling sphere,
That mortal sense might never hear and live.
They pierced like arrows through the Angel's ear;
He bow'd his head; 'twas vain to fly or strive.
Down comes the final wrath: the thunders give
The doubled peal,—the rains in cataracts sweep,
Broad bars of fire the sheeted deluge rive;
The mountain summits to the valley leap,
Pavilion, garden, grove, smoke up one ruin'd heap.

LXI

The storm stands still! a moment's pause of terror!
All dungeon-dark!—Again the lightnings yawn,
Shewing the earth as in a quivering mirror.
The prostrate Angel felt but that the one,
Whose love had lost him Paradise, was gone:
He dared not see her corpse!—he closed his eyes;
A voice burst o'er him, solemn as the tone
Of the last trump,—he glanced upon the skies,
He saw, what shook his soul with terror, shame, surprise.

214

LXII

The Minstrel stood before him; two broad plumes
Spread from her shoulders on the burthen'd air;
Her face was glorious still, but love's young blooms
Had vanish'd for the hue of bold despair;
A fiery circle crown'd her sable hair;
And, as she look'd upon her prostrate prize,
Her eyeballs shot around a meteor glare,
Her form tower'd up at once to giant size;
'Twas Eblis! king of Hell's relentless sovereignties.

LXIII

The tempter spoke—“Spirit, thou mightst have stood,
But thou hast fall'n a weak and willing slave.
Now were thy feeble heart our serpents' food,
Thy bed our burning ocean's sleepless wave,
But haughty Heaven controls the power it gave.
Yet art thou doom'd to wander from thy sphere,
Till the last trumpet reaches to the grave;
Till the Sun rolls the grand concluding year;
Till Earth is Paradise; then shall thy crime be clear.”

215

LXIV

The Angel listen'd,—risen upon one knee,
Resolved to hear the deadliest undismay'd.
His star-dropt plume hung round him droopingly,
His brow, like marble, on his hand was staid.
Still through the auburn locks' o'er hanging shade
His face shone beautiful; he heard his ban;
Then came the words of mercy, sternly said;
He plunged within his hands his visage wan,
And the first wild, sweet tears from his heart-pulses ran.

LXV

The Giant grasp'd him as he fell to earth,
And his black vanes upon the air were flung,
A tabernacle dark;—and shouts of mirth
Mingled with shriekings through the tempest swung;
His arm around the fainting Angel clung.
Then on the clouds he darted with a groan;
A moment o'er the mount of ruin hung,
Then burst through space, like the red comet's cone,
Leaving his track on heaven a burning, endless zone.

THE END.

228

ON THE GRAVE OF MAJOR SCHILL,

BURIED ON THE GLACIS OF STRALSUND.

[_]

Schill was one of those bold spirits who, in the days of German degradation, sustained the ancient memory of their country's valour. After the battle of Jena, he burst from Berlin, with his own regiment of hussars; and at their head, with a few volunteers, kept the French communications in alarm, taking Marshal Victor, and scouring the country up to the Baltic. He was finally attacked by a superior force in Stralsund, and, after a desperate struggle, slain.

STRANGER.
German soldier, is thy tear
Shed on a felon's sepulchre?
What can shelter in that heap,
But some guilty outcast's sleep?—
Yet, many a footstep freshly round
Marks it, like loved and holy ground.

SOLDIER.
Stranger! this heap is all the grave
Of one who died, as die the brave!
And never bosom's nobler tide
Stain'd flood or field, than when he died.
Stranger! no stone might dare to tell
His name, who on this red spot fell.

229

These steps are steps of German men,
Who, when the tyrant's in his den,
Come nightly here with solemn tread,
To vow their vengeance o'er the dead.
Dead!—No! that spirit's light'ning still!
Stranger! thou seest the grave of Schill.

230

ON THE DEATH OF ORPHEUS.

FROM THE GREEK OF ANTIPATER.

“Ουκ ετι θελγομενας, Ορφευ,” κ. τ. λ.

Orpheus! thou no more shalt lead,
From the mountain's bending head,
Ancient rocks and forests gray,
Nor make the brinded lion play,
And the spotted leopard crouch
Beside thy high-retired couch;
While the eagle check'd its wing,
Charm'd above thy solemn string.
Thou no more the snow shalt bind,
Or the biting Thracian wind:

231

Nor subdue the stormy cloud,
Hoary Winter's chilling shroud;
Nor, with an enchanted strain,
On old Ocean fling a chain.
Many a tear was shed for thee!
The divine Calliope,
In wild beauty, through the woods,
Where the yellow autumn broods,
Wept and wander'd for thee long;
In their caves the Satyr throng,
Grieving, stamp'd with horny tread
On the sweet, uneven reed;
And every Dryad from her tree
Fill'd the air with wo for thee.
Thou'rt gone! Shall mortals o'er the grave repine,
When thus a goddess mourns a son divine!

232

SANDT, THE MURDERER.

[_]

Sandt was a student in a German University, who, inflamed by the mysticism and extravagance of the half-revolutionary and half-infidel doctrines, which perverted the German youth at the close of the French war, determined to make himself memorable by sacrificing some enemy of his country. For this enemy he fixed on Kotzebue, the dramatist, who, from his being known to send letters on the state of the German public mind to the Emperor Alexander, had rendered himself suspected by the partizans of the Tugendbund. Sandt went to his house, handed him a letter, and while he was looking over it, stabbed him to the heart. He then gave himself some desperate wounds, but was seized before he could thus atrociously consummate the double triumph of the new philosophy. After a long imprisonment, he was brought to trial, sentenced, and put to death on the glacis of Manheim.

233

The night was stormy; yet the clang
Of hammers through the darkness rang,
And on the rampart's vapoury swamp
High swung one faint and fitful lamp,
And came upon the gusty swell
The challenge of the sentinel;
As if some deed were doing there
Unfit for man to see or hear.

Morn rose on twilight, dim and slow;
By Manheim's gates were signs of woe—
A scaffold hung with black, a chair,
A sable bench,—a sabre bare,
Show'd, that before the setting sun
Some wretch's chain should be undone.

234

The gates roll back, and from the wall
Come chargers' tramp, and trumpet's call:
And, in the horsemen's midst, the dawn
Gleams on a face lone, wild, and wan;
The dazzled eye, the lip of blue,
Tell that to them the light is new;
Tell of the chain, the heavy air,
That damps the felon's sleepless lair.
The hand;—that pale, thin hand, which now
So feebly wanders o'er the brow,
By that was murder done; the stain
That left the hand, has dyed the brain.

The troops have reach'd the fatal stair,
The headsman stands beside the chair;
The pale, uncover'd multitude
Are hush'd as death; now—blood for blood!

High Heaven! what burning thoughts must roll
Through man beside that fearful goal?

235

Conscience has started from her sleep;
Now, man of sin! thy harvest reap.
He sees a traitor's step intrude
Upon an old man's solitude;
He sees the dagger in his heart,—
The writhe, ere soul and body part,—
The gasp, the dying gush of gore:—
The murderer dares to think no more,
Curses the moment's frantic zeal,
And hurries to the headsman's steel.

Yet, when beneath the rising sun
His native mountains lovely shone;
He raised one eastward, eager glare,
Wildly inhaled the living air,
On sun and sky his eyeball cast,
Like one who on them look'd his last;
Gave to the world one dreary sigh,
Then summon'd his sad strength to die.

236

The sword flash'd round, the red blood sprang,
To heaven arose the trumpet-clang,—
And of the murderer, all that lay
Upon that floor was blood and clay.

GEMS, FROM THE ANTIQUE;
[_]

THE ETCHINGS BY R. DAGLEY.
[_]

In the following Designs the selection has been made chiefly with a view to their capability of supplying topics for poetry,— rather as objects of taste than of virtù. The drawings are necessarily slight and unlaboured; the sole object being to preserve the character of the originals. Finished designs of gems are seldom found in the greater collections; for no excellence of the engraver can satisfy the eye of the antiquary—and true taste will prefer an accurate indication, to the studied and finished copying of forms, whose delicacy and sweetness are beyond all power of the burin.

“Here from the mould to conscious being start
Those finer forms, the miracles of art;
Here chosen Gems, imprest on sulphur, shine,
That slept for ages in a second mine.”
ROGERS.

253

PERICLES AND ASPASIA.

This was the ruler of the land,
When Athens was the land of fame;
This was the light that led the band,
When each was like a living flame:
The centre of earth's noblest ring,
Of more than men, the more than king!

254

Yet, not by fetter, nor by spear,
His sovereignty was held or won;
Fear'd—but alone as freemen fear;
Loved—but as freemen love alone:
He waved the sceptre o'er his kind,
By Nature's first great title—mind!

Resistless words were on his tongue;
Then eloquence first flash'd below!
Full arm'd to life the portent sprung,
Minerva, from the Thunderer's brow!
And his the sole, the sacred hand,
That shook her ægis o'er the land!

And throned immortal, by his side,
A woman sits, with eye sublime—
Aspasia, all his spirit's bride;
But if their solemn love were crime,
Pity the beauty and the sage;
Their crime was in their darken'd age.

255

He perish'd—but his wreath was won—
He perish'd on his height of fame!
Then sank the cloud on Athens' sun;
Yet still she conquer'd in his name.
Fill'd with his soul, she could not die;
Her conquest was Posterity!

256

THE GENIUS OF DEATH.

What is Death? 'Tis to be free!
No more to love, or hope, or fear—
To join the great equality:
All alike are humbled there!
The mighty grave
Wraps lord and slave;
Nor pride nor poverty dares come
Within that refuge-house, the tomb!

257

Spirit with the drooping wing,
And the ever-weeping eye,
Thou of all earth's kings art king!
Empires at thy footstool lie!
Beneath thee strew'd
Their multitude
Sink, like waves upon the shore;
Storms shall never rouse them more!

What's the grandeur of the earth
To the grandeur round thy throne!
Riches, glory, beauty, birth,
To thy kingdom all have gone.
Before thee stand
The wond'rous band;
Bards, heroes, sages, side by side,
Who darken'd nations when they died!

258

Earth has hosts; but thou canst show
Many a million for her one;
Through thy gates the mortal flow
Has for countless years roll'd on:
Back from the tomb
No step has come;
There fix'd, till the last thunder's sound
Shall bid thy prisoners be unbound!

259

A WOMAN CONTEMPLATING A HOUSEHOLD GOD.

Domestic Love! not in proud palace halls
Is often seen thy beauty to abide;
Thy dwelling is in lowly cottage walls,
That in the thickets of the woodbine hide;
With hum of bees around, and from the side
Of woody hills some little bubbling spring,
Shining along through banks with harebells dyed;
And many a bird to warble on the wing,
When Morn her saffron robe o'er heaven and earth doth fling.

260

O! love of loves!—to thy white hand is given
Of earthly happiness the golden key!
Thine are the joyous hours of winter's even,
When the babes cling around their father's knee;
And thine the voice, that on the midnight sea
Melts the rude mariner with thoughts of home,
Peopling the gloom with all he longs to see.
Spirit! I've built a shrine; and thou hast come,
And on its altar closed—for ever closed thy plume!

261

LEONIDAS.

Shout for the mighty men
Who died along this shore—
Who died within this mountain glen!
For never nobler chieftain's head
Was laid on Valour's crimson bed,
Nor ever prouder gore
Sprang forth, than theirs who won the day
Upon thy strand, Thermopylæ!

262

Shout for the mighty men,
Who on the Persian tents,
Like lions from their midnight den,
Bounding on the slumbering deer,
Rush'd—a storm of sword and spear;—
Like the roused elements,
Let loose from an immortal hand,
To chasten or to crush a land!

But there are none to hear;
Greece is a hopeless slave.
Leonidas! no hand is near
To lift thy fiery falchion now;
No warrior makes the warrior's vow
Upon thy sea-wash'd grave.
The voice that should be raised by men,
Must now be given by wave and glen.

263

And it is given!—the surge—
The tree—the rock—the sand—
On Freedom's kneeling spirit urge,
In sounds that speak but to the free,
The memory of thine and thee!
The vision of thy band
Still gleams within the glorious dell,
Where their gore hallow'd, as it fell!

And is thy grandeur done?
Mother of men like these!
Has not thy outcry gone,
Where Justice has an ear to hear?—
Be holy! God shall guide thy spear;
Till in thy crimson'd seas,
Are plunged the chain and scimitar,
Greece shall be a new-born Star!

264

CASTOR AND POLLUX.

When Winter dips his pinion in the seas,
And mariners shudder, as the chilling gale
Makes its wild music through the Cyclades;
What eyes are fix'd upon the cloudy veil,
Twin Warriors! to behold your sapphire mail,
Shooting its splendours through the rifted sky!
What joyous hymns your stars of beauty hail!
For then the tempests to their caverns fly,
And on the pebbled shore the yellow surges die.

265

CUPID BREAKING THE THUNDERBOLT.

Where is, O Love! thy nest?
Is it in Beauty's breast,
Or in the meshes of her chestnut hair?
Or do thine arrows fly,
Wing'd from her azure eye,
Or from her coral lip's delicious air.

O love! 'tis all the same;
For thy subduing flame,
Alike by sunny tress and sigh is fann'd;
And hearts, in all their pride,
Have in sweet passion died,
Ev'n at the faint touch of her snowy hand.

266

Sceptres are weak to thee,
Thou thing of infancy!
Thy childish wrath can break the bolts of Jove.
Yet deadlier is thy smile,
The spirit to beguile,
Making the tomb the bride-bed—faithless Love!

267

A FAUN.

Shadow me, woods! and let your branches wave,
Making sweet music to my drowsy ear:
Be dim, fair moon! and through the leafy roof
Seem but a twinkling lamp; and every breeze
Die on your flowery beds, until my eyes
Yield to this pleasant heaviness!

And hark!
There is a gentle music in the air!
The moon is but a lamp, and the rude wind
Has died upon the rose!—Come, gentle dream!

This is Elysium! All the grove is fill'd
With sights and sounds of wonder:—There's no tree,
But opening lets a goddess forth; the streams

268

Send up bright shapes, that from their lilied hair
Wring out the sparkling waters; all the hills
Are starr'd with silver fires; the marble caves
Show through their ivy curtains sylvan lamps,
Lit by the glow-worm's torch; and airy songs
Bewitch the night.

This is the woodland King!
And here upon his lonely throne he sits,
Entranced, with his sweet pipe fix'd at his foot,
And listens to the revelry,—till Morn,
Led by the gray-hair'd Twilight from her couch,
Comes, like a blushing bride, to meet the Sun!

269

CUPID CARRYING PROVISIONS. A.D. 1600.

There was once a gentle time
Whenne the world was in its prime;
And everie day was holydaye,
And everie monthe was lovelie Maye.—
Cupide thenne hadde but to goe
With his purple winges and bowe;
And in blossomede vale and grove
Everie shepherde knelte to Love.

Thenne a rosie, dimplede cheeke,
And a blue eye fonde and meeke;

270

And a ringlette-wreathenne browe,
Like hyacynthes on a bed of snowe;
And a lowe voice silverre sweete
From a lippe without deceite:
Onlie those the heartes coulde move
Of the simple swaines to love.

But thatte time is gone and paste;
Canne the summerre alwayes laste!
And the swaines are wiser growne,
And the hearte is turnede to stone,
And the maidenne's rose may witherre,
Cupide's fled, no manne knowes whitherre!

But anotherre Cupide's come,
With a browe of care and gloome;
Fixede upon the earthlie moulde,
Thinkinge of the sullenne golde:
In his hande the bowe no more,
At his backe the householde store,

271

That the bridalle colde muste buye;
Uselesse nowe the smile ande sighe:
But he weares the pinion stille,
Flyinge at the sighte of ille.
Oh, for the olde true-love time,
Whenne the worlde was in its prime!

272

SAPPHO.

Look on this brow!—the laurel wreath
Beam'd on it, like a wreath of fire;
For passion gave the living breath,
That shook the chords of Sappho's lyre!

Look on this brow—the lowest slave,
The veriest wretch of want and care,
Might shudder at the lot that gave
Her genius, glory, and despair.

For, from these lips were utter'd sighs,
That more than fever, scorch'd the frame;
And tears were rain'd from these bright eyes,
That from the heart, like life-blood, came.

273

She loved—she felt the lightning-gleam,
That keenest strikes the loftiest mind;
Life quench'd in one ecstatic dream,
The world a waste before—behind.

And she had hope—the treacherous hope,
The last, deep poison of the bowl,
That makes us drain it, drop by drop,
Nor lose one misery of soul.

Then all gave way—mind, passion, pride!
She cast one weeping glance above,
And buried in her bed, the tide,
The whole concentred strife of Love!

274

DIANA.

How like a Queen comes forth the lonely Moon
From the slow-opening curtains of the clouds,
Walking in beauty to her midnight throne!
The stars are veil'd in light; the ocean-floods,
And the ten thousand streams—the boundless woods,
The trackless wilderness—the mountain's brow,
Where Winter on eternal pinions broods—
All height, depth, wildness, grandeur, gloom, below,
Touch'd by thy smile, lone Moon! in one wide splendour glow.

275

GENIUS BOUND.

Glorious Spirit! at whose birth
Joy might fill the conscious earth;
Yet her joy be dash'd with fear,
As at untold danger near;
A comet rising on her gloom,
Or to light her, or consume!

Beauty is upon thy brow!
Such sad beauty as the bow,
Child of shower and sunbeam, wears,
Waked, and vanishing, in tears;
Yet to its splendid moment given
Colours only lit by heaven.

276

Thou canst take the lightning's wings,
And see the deep forbidden things;—
With thy starry sandal tread
On the ocean's treasure bed;
Or make the rolling clouds thy throne;
Height and depth to thee are one!

Prophet Spirit! thou canst sweep
Where the unborn nations sleep;
Or, from the ancient ages' shroud
To judgement call their sceptred crowd;
Earth has to thee nor birth, nor tomb—
Nor past, nor present, nor to come.

Yet here thou sit'st, while earth and heaven
Are to thy radiant empire given.
Alas! I see the manacle!—
And all thy soul has felt the steel;
Thy wing of fire, thy beauty, vain—
For Genius dies beneath the chain!

277

BACCHUS ON A PANTHER.

Boy of beauty rare!
With thy lip in roses dyed,
And that harmless, infant air,
Why upon the panther ride,
Boy of beauty rare?

Sweet one! is't to tell
That within thy cup is woe!
That the victim of thy spell
Passion's fiery speed shall know?—
Thou'rt an oracle!

278

THESEUS.

When Theseus left his Ariadne's side,
Young Bacchus came—at once her tears were dried.
Our widows, hence, disdain in weeds to pine,
But take another husband with their wine!

279

A TRITON AND NEREID.

The day had been a tempest, and our bark,
Ploughing the surly and impetuous surge,
Had reach'd a bay in Crete. The evening fell,
Leaving the sky all painted with bright clouds,
That dyed their crimson on the glassy sea.
So, having moor'd, we lay, like men escaped,
Idly upon the poop and deck, in talk,
Such as the wanderer loves, of fearful wrecks;
Of night surprises, where the slumbering crew
Were woke by pirate swords; of buried gold
In the sea-chambers; of the warnings sweet,

280

That come o' nights between the stormy gusts,
The mermaids' melodies.

At once uprose
A tumult of rich sounds, as if the deep
Were cleft to let them forth: then died as swift,
Leaving us breathless, gazing all perplex'd,
Like spell-struck creatures!—But, anon, the wave
Was fill'd with wonders, wild and green-hair'd men,
With conchs for trumpets, follow'd by fair nymphs,
That show'd their ivory shoulders through the tide;
Some, tossing spears of coral, some, pearl-crown'd,
And scattering roses—or, with lifted hands,
Reining the purple lips of dolphins yoked,
And huge sea-horses.

While we stood amazed;
A meteor shot above, the trumpets swell'd,
And on a sweeping and high-crested surge,
That stoop'd our pennant to its foaming edge,
Rush'd by two sovereign Shapes, hand twined in hand,
In speechless love!—The waves around were swum

281

By crowding Cupids, Tritons, and sweet Nymphs
Filling the perfumed air with harmony.

The pageant flash'd away, and left us dim,
Like men who had seen lightning!

282

ATALANTA.

When the young Greek for Atalanta sigh'd,
He might have fool'd and follow'd, till he died!
He learn'd the sex, the bribe before her roll'd,
And found, the short way to the heart is—Gold!

283

SILENUS LOOKING AT A GOBLET.

Where is the Necromancer? Let him bring
His treasury of charms—rich syrups—herbs
Gather'd in eclipse, or where shooting stars
Sow earth with pearl: or let him call his sprites,
Till the air thickens, and the golden noon,
Smote by their wings, is turn'd to sudden night.
This goblet's worth all magic.

Of its draught
Let sorrow taste, anon, the lifeless lip
Glows crimson; sullen Poverty is rich;
The bondsman's chain is light as gossamer;
The lover's eye, long dim with wasting tears,
Shines brightly, and sees kneeling for a look
The tyrant Beauty; Age is warm'd to Youth;

284

Lean Avarice hoards no more; and crouching Fear
Stalks giant-like: the fretted brows of kings
Forget the feverish pressure of a crown,
And taste as pleasant slumber as the slave's,
That toils for't in the sun.

285

VENUS CLIPPING THE WINGS OF CUPID.

Venus, clippe thy truante's winge:—
For it is the deadliest thinge
'Twixte the rounde earthe and the skie.
Not the poisonne-staines that lie
Glisteninge in the waninge moone,
On the slipperie serpente stone;
Not the droppe of venome hunge
Coldlie from the aspic's tongue;
Not the witche's eville eye,
As she hurries mutteringe bye;
Nothinge born of sunne or gloome,
Is so deadlie as thatte plume!

286

For the hearte's no sooner wonne,
Than the truante Love is gone;
Fickle as the Aprille gale.
Then the maidene's cheeke is pale;
And the vermeile-tincturede lippe,
Riche as rosebuddes when they dippe
In the summerre honeye-dewe,
Dyinge, weares the lilye's hue;
Ande, for smiles, the wearie sighe
On its beautie nowe dothe lie;
Ande the farewelle worde is spokenne—
Ande the maidene's heart is brokenne!

287

FLORA.

The flowers are Nature's jewels, with whose wealth
She decks her summer beauty;—Primrose sweet,
With blossoms of pure gold; enchanting Rose,
That like a virgin queen, salutes the Sun,
Dew-diadem'd; the perfumed Pink, that studs
The earth with clustering ruby; Hyacinth,
The hue of Venus' tresses;—Myrtle green,
That maidens think a charm for constant love,
And give night-kisses to it, and so dream;
Fair Lilly! woman's emblem, and oft twined
Round bosoms, where its silver is unseen,

288

Such is their whiteness;—downcast Violet,
Turning away its sweet head from the wind,
As she her delicate and startled ear
From passion's tale!

289

THE EDUCATION OF BACCHUS.

I had a vision!—'Twas an Indian vale,
Whose sides were all with rosy thickets crown'd,
That never felt the biting winter gale;—
And soon was heard a most delicious sound;
And to its music danced a nymph embrown'd,
Leading a lion in a silken twine,
That with his yellow mane would sweep the ground,
Then on his rider fawn—a boy divine!
While on his foaming lips a nymph shower'd purple wine.

290

PINDAR.

In the grave this head was laid;—
All its atoms in the sun
Through a thousand years have play'd,
Through a thousand shapes have gone:
It has blossom'd in the flower—
It has floated in the wave—
It has lit the starlight hour—
It has whisper'd through the cave!
Has the spirit perish'd all?
This was but its mouldering wall!

291

Fame, the prize of life, was won;
Pindar's mighty task was done;
Then on air his wing was cast!
Like a flame, the soul has past,
While the ashes rest below;—
Like a trumpet's sudden blast,
Gone!—what strength shall check it now?
When the lightning wears a chain,
Pindar's soul shall stoop again!—

Yet the world has need of thee,
Man of Immortality:
Greece,—the name is lost in tears,—
Land of laurels, lyres, and spears!
Visions on that spot have birth,
Brighter than are born of earth:
In that soil of glorious strife,
Not an atom but had life.
Glow'd and triumph'd, fought and died,
As the patriot battle's tide,

292

Flood of arrow, lance, and sword,
O'er the whelm'd invader roar'd.

Hear us! from thy golden sphere!—
Shall the eternal sepulchre
Hide the spirit of the land?
Shall no great, redeeming hand—
(Oh, for such as dyed her seas
In thy day, Miltiades!)
Issuing from her peasant ranks,
Smite the turban'd robber horde,
Till the chain no longer clanks,—
Till the Turkish battle, gored,
Over Helle's purple banks
In returnless flight is pour'd;—
Till the phalanx, laurel-brow'd,
Like a rolling thunder-cloud,
Like a conflagration sweeping,
Of its plague-spot clears the soil;
And no more the voice of weeping,
Woman's shame, or manhood's spoil,

293

Grieves the listening midnight sky?—
Pindar! shall her glory die!
Shall, like thine, no godlike strain
Teach her to be great again?
Hear us, from thy starry throne
Hear!—by those in Marathon!

END OF THE GEMS.

307

INSCRIPTION FOR AN ANTIQUE CASKET, CONTAINING A RING.

A.D. 1500.

From India came this little bande
Of emeralde and rubie stone,
A spelle that sparklinge on thine hande,
Should tell thee gentle tales of one,
Whose daye and nighte were memorie,
Helene! of loveliness and thee.

A spelle was gravenne in its golde,
A spirit fixede, without his winges;
To Helene once it would have tolde
More than was ever tolde by ringes:
But now, mie dreame's alle past and gone,
Mie teares are on the burial stone!

308

Thou canst not see the teares that starte
From eyes by thoughtes like those beguilde,
Thou canst not knowe the beatinge hearte,
Ever a victime and a childe!
To me 'tis left alone to grieve;
The tombe, the tombe doth not deceive.

I'll heare thy voice of melodie
In whispers of the summerre air,
I'll see the brightnesse of thine eye
In the blue eveninge's shininge starre,
In moonlighte beames thy puritie;
And look on heavenne, to look on thee!

309

THE BATTLE SONG.

FROM THE GREEK OF TYRTÆUS.

“Μεχρις τεδ' κατακειθες,” κ. τ. λ.

Shake off slumber—Men, arise!
Dare you meet the scorner's eyes?
War is safety, peace is fear,
Life is only in the spear.
Though ye perish, let the dart
Quiver in the slayer's heart!
Falling, dying, battle still,—
Glory's in the warrior-will!

310

Death must strike us soon or late,
'Tis the stern decree of fate:
Heroes, onwards,—press the targe
Close to the burning heart, and charge!
Push the spear!—Not Jove could save
His offspring from the common grave:
The coward and the brave must fall,
Death smites alike in field and hall.
Yet where's the wife's, the people's tear,
Upon the flyer's culprit bier?
But, if the wound the brave man wring,
The people to his threshold cling;
He dies—they love the ground he trod;
Living, he lives a demi-god!
The nation's tower, beloved, adored—
An army in his single sword!

311

DEATH.

FROM THE GREEK OF AGATHIAS.

“Τον θανατον τι φοβεισθε;” κ. τ. λ.

Why shrink at Death, the end of all our woes—
Life's healer—mighty mother of repose?
If good, 'tis good for ever; but if ill,
It wounds but once, and then the pang is still.
Life's wan diseases strike us o'er and o'er;
The traveller of death returns no more!

312

THE MAGIC LAMP.

“On the cavern's chilling stone
Faint with terror, lost, alone;
Young Aladdin, dost thou lie,
Waiting for thine hour to die?”
Rushing in his spell-bound sleep
Tens of thousand fathoms deep,
What is o'er his shrinking head?
Ocean thundering on its bed.
What beneath that rocky floor?
Gulphs of ever-burning ore?

313

There came a voice, it was strange and sweet
As the sounds that on evening waters meet,
When the winds on the purpling mountain die,
And the sun gives his farewell look to the sky.
Is it a dream? He feels his hand
Touch'd by the point of a feathery wand,
And his dying glance is raised from the stone—
Along the roof a radiance shone,
A gentle glory, like the line
Of the rising crescent argentine,
And hovering in its central white,
On azure wings, a shape of light.
The eye that look'd its ringlets through,
Was bright as the stars of the Himmalu,
Or the violet flash of the northern sky;
And on its ringlets clustering high
A coronet shed a steady glow,
Like a ring of flame imprison'd in snow.
It spoke, and its wings' descending wave
With a breath of odours fill'd the cave.

314

“Lord of the talisman of might,
That binds to man the sons of light,
We heard thee in our airy hall,
Above the dog-star's burning ball;
And now at our master's summoning,
Behold, the Genii of the Ring.”

Aladdin knelt, the Moslem's breast
Was bow'd, in homage, to the east.
A blaze of lightning o'er him shot,
And where it struck, a burning spot
Still shone upon the granite wall.
It waver'd and spread like a fiery pall,
Sanguine and more sanguine growing,
Till the whole sheet of rock was glowing,
In gushes and serpent coils of flame
That sear'd his eyes and scorch'd his frame!
Woe, woe, to the lord of the talisman.
Terror and anguish through him ran;
“There must he fall.” He strove to fling
From his dying hand the Mystic Ring.

315

The sulphurous flame before him roll'd,
But 'twas now like the verdure soft and cold
That Spring embroiders for Persian vales,
When the moonlight awakes the nightingales.
Then rose and fell on his ear a sound,
Like music echoing under ground;
Sinking and sweet, yet unsubdued,
Like the distant song of multitude;
Or the wind's melody, when the sun
Has his first garland of crimson thrown
On the dusky Eastern sea;
Or the forest's evening harmony,
When every leaf has found a tongue;
A swelling, strange, inconstant song.
And, crowding through the lunar light,
Came glittering shapes, then pass'd from sight:
Wing'd spirits, floating in beauty round,
To the risings and fallings of that sweet sound.
And on the ringlets of each fair brow
The circlet of flame imprison'd in snow;

316

Till the chaunt was done, and the train were gone,
Dissolving like airs and dews through the stone.

Now rose on his sight a Pagoda old,
Flourished with sculptures wild and bold;
And around it piles of ancient stone
Like the tombs of monarchs dead and gone,
Cover'd with carpets of giant weeds,
And mighty trunks, where the adder breeds.
He burst the gate. But his eagle gaze
Shrank in the lightning's arrowy rays,
That shot from the trees of the palace bower,
Thick as the drops of a summer shower.
The fruits o'er his head and the flowers at his feet
Were living topaz and crysolite,
The smallest shrub that shook in the wind
Was worth all the pearls of the princes of Ind.
But he saw not, he touch'd not, but struggled on,
Where his charmed life must be lost or won;
Where blazed in the garden's depth the Lamp,
Like the central fire of an eastern camp,

317

When the turban'd Rajah and swarthy Khan
Prepare for the fight in the midnight divan.
The piercing blaze of that lofty light
Mark'd the place of mystery and might,
Whence the spirits of many an evil Star
Shot the shafts of pestilence and war;
And Famine's cold breath was blown on the soil,
And Death led the Tartar and Curd to the spoil.
The blaze of the talisman was sent
Through the wavering folds of a boundless tent,
That like clouds of amber and orange shone
Round the garden's bright, unsetting Sun:
For there it had flamed from earth's primal hour,
The sun and the soul of king Lucifer's bower.

He climbed the hill. A roar of flame
Show'd where the lava round him came;
A thousand arrows were on the wing,
He could hear the twanging of the string;
A thousand scimitars cleft the air,
Yet they touch'd not one lock of his waving hair.

318

The curtain arose. The Lamp's fierce light
Shot gushes of flame on his withering sight;
But he press'd the ring, and he saw their fire
Shrink, like a wounded dragon's spire.
And fiendish curse and loud lament
Swell'd from the depths of the genie tent,
Mingled with shrieks and battle cries,
Women's and warriors' agonies.
But still he rush'd on, though from head to heel
He felt his startled senses reel.
He touch'd the Lamp; down sank the flame—
Thunder, and tempest, and midnight came.

His senses were gone.—When he gazed again,
He was standing beside a fearful den;
But o'er his head was the dewy light
That heralds the stars of the Persian night;
And play'd on his cheek the dewy air,
And the dew was cool on his raven hair;
And, where the moon, on the mountains lay,
He saw rampart and minaret tall and gray.

319

'Tis his Persian hound that beside him lies,
'Tis his Turcoman steed that beside him neighs,
'Tis Bagdad that sleeps in the silver showers
By the moonlight shed on those stately towers.
But a chaunt is heard of voice and string—
“Aladdin rise, and be more than a king.
The Lamp, dominion's master-sign,
The Ring of the genie lords, are thine;
Yet the warrior-soul the prize that won,
Is brighter than Lamp, and Ring, and throne.”

320

NELSON'S PILLAR, AT YARMOUTH.

WRITTEN BY THE SEA-SIDE ON A LOWERING EVENING.

There is a gloomy grandeur in the sun,
That levels his last light along the shore;
The clouds are rolling downwards stern and dun;
The long, slow wave is streak'd with red, like gore
On some vast field of battle; and the roar
Of wave and wind comes like the battle's sound.
From Ocean's depths a column seems to soar,
A shaft of silver, on whose summit, wound
With fiery beams, sits Britain sad, and throned, and crown'd!

321

And now the sun sinks deeper; and the clouds,
In folds of sullen fire, still heavier lour;
'Till the whole storm the shore and ocean shrouds.
But o'er the tempest glows that stately tower,
A giant height, on which the sunbeams shower
Their undiminish'd glories. Nelson's name
Is on the column. Thus the battle's hour
But show'd the splendour of his spirit's flame,
Thus till earth's final night shall blaze the Hero's fame.

322

THE INDIAN GIRL AND SERPENT.

FROM A PICTURE BY STEWARDSON.

“Is it a vision? For I've seen such things
Among the morning skies, and the sweet fires
That play round tree-tops in the setting sun.”

The bower is of the Indian drapery
That weaves its living woof of flowers and fruits,
Red with the kisses of the amorous sun;
The roof is canopied crimson of the rose,
Vaulting a couch of violet, here and there
Tinged with some bud fresh weeping from the roof;
And tissued with rich leaves, that force their way
Veining the blue, like gold in lazuli.

323

A form is in that bower, that might be thought
Placed there for man to worship, or of those
That sit on thrones o' the cloud, and wreathe their wings
With pearls still wet from dews of Paradise.
Yet she is human, and the silvery shawl,
That, like a holy circle o'er a saint,
Crowns her pale beauty, binds a weary brow,
Besieged with memories that make it pale.

She sits upon the ground; and one hand lifts
A flute, that from her lip draws melodies,
Like the wind's wooing of the rose; and one
Holds a bright serpent in a silken band.
Her eye is on him, and his eye on her,
As if she found in him one thing to love;
As if he felt her beauty, not her chain,
And lived upon her melancholy smile.
Her song has stirr'd him; it has stirr'd herself;
For on her eyelash hangs a glistening tear,
The heart's quick tribute to times past and gone;
And such wild sportings as he can he tries

324

Before her powerful eye, and suits his dance,
Swifter or slower, to her wandering song.
He shoots along the violet floor, and lies
Straight as a prostrate column, and as still
As its pale marble; then sweeps up his coil,
Surge upon surge, and lays his gorgeous head
With its fix'd, sleepless eye i' the centre ring,
The watcher of his living citadel;
Then rolls away as loose as the sea-wave;
Anon, he stoops like the wild swan, and shows
A neck as arch'd and silvery; then the vine
Must be outdone, and he's as lithe, and curl'd,
And glistens through the leaves as proud a green.
But now the song grows loftier, and his pomp
Must all be worn to please his Indian queen.
He rises from his train, that on the ground
Floats in gold circles, and his glittering head
Towers in the sunset, like a rising flame;
And he has put on colours that make dim
The stones o' the Indian mine: his length is sheathed
In mail, that has for plates the mother-pearl,

325

And for its studs the diamond: there's no ray
That strikes his neck from that broad setting sun,
But rings it with a collar of rich gems,
Or sheets it in one emerald, or the flame
Of rubies. From beneath his burning crest
Flashes the eye, a living chrysolite,
Yet fix'd in all its shootings on one form,
That thanks its duty with a faint fond smile.
So stands and shines he till the charm is done,
And that sweet sound and sweeter smile have sunk
In silence and in shade.

326

A SKETCH FROM LIFE.

“Minds dedicate
To nothing temporal.”
Shakspeare.

Twilight was in the chamber, yet the flame
That burn'd around the sun's descending throne
In one long splendour through the casement came,
Tinging the sofa's silk, the Parian stone,
The pictures' sculptured frames, that partial shone
Through that rich dusk, around the forms divine,
By mind upon the Italian canvas thrown;
Like the carved pillars of an eastern mine;
The Indian's treasure-cave, and Vishnu's holy shrine.

327

The beam swept round, till its full glory fell
Upon an idol's, yet a woman's form;
Her eye upon the sun, as if some spell
For life had on it fix'd the lofty charm.
She had been painting;—and her snowy arm
Hung, pausing o'er the picture, like a ray;
Her opening lip, her delicate cheek seem'd warm
With Inspiration's fires;—till parting day
Veil'd her in purple shades; and all sank soft away.

328

ON A GRAVE AT WATERLOO.

Ω ξειν', αγγειλον Λακεδαιμονιοις, οτι τηδε
Κειμεθα, τοις κεινων πειθομενοι νομιμοις. .
Inscription at Thermopylæ.

Stranger, though here no laurel wave,
Here sleeps the bravest of the brave:
And never earth saw obsequies
Like his who in this green turf lies.
The might of nations rushing here
Beheld him close his high career;
The sound in which he long'd to die,
Rose mingled with his dying cry;

329

Earth shook, the heavens were wrapt in gloom,
The hour that laid him in the tomb;
And the world heard, from shore to shore,
The shout that told, the rite was o'er.

The forms that stood the grave beside
Were France and England's warrior-pride!
The gale that caught his dying sigh
Thunder'd with England's victory!
And the last shout the heavens that tore
Was France's blood-extinguish'd roar!

“Stranger, tell the Lacedæmonians, that we lie here, in obedience to their laws.”

330

ON A PORTRAIT, BY MASQUERIER, OF A LADY STANDING BEFORE A GLASS.

SHE WAS THEN DYING OF A CONSUMPTION.

She looks within the mirror, and her form
Is from its dazzling crystal given again
In living beauty; yet a hueless charm
Is on the lip; the blue pellucid vein
Wanders across a brow, where silent pain
Sheds paleness on its polish'd ivory.
The crimson of that cheek has felt the stain
Of tears, that flow'd unseen by human eye,
As from her pillow rose her midnight prayer—to die.

331

And so she died,—in early beauty died,
A violet by its first soft shower decay'd:
A flash of radiance on life's changing tide,
Just seen and loved, and sunk in evening's shade;
A young sweet star, just rising, but to fade;
And this fair image smiling in sad bloom
On her, so soon in quiet to be laid,
Looks like her angel, in its meekness come,
To tell her of the tomb, her calm, her hallow'd tomb.

332

INSCRIPTION ON AN URN.

Thou loveliest of the lovely, where
Is thy bright spirit gone?
Where is thy gentle throne;
In what sweet and silver sphere?

Tell me, my Helena, that I
All night on thee may gaze,
And know thy temple's blaze
From all the splendours of the sky.

Oh! if the loved in death return,
To love and look upon
The pale, heart-broken one,
Who weeps at midnight o'er their urn;

333

Tell me, when on the blissful air
They stoop, that I may be
Found fit to welcome thee,
With hands and heart upraised in prayer.

Or art thou changed, and to mine eye
A thing invisible;
Wrapp'd in the unpierced veil
Of holy immortality?

No,—thou wilt stoop to earth no more,
Thy glory were profaned
By thoughts to earth still chain'd:
My Helena,—thy trial's o'er.

And I will follow thee above.
Life's bitterness is past,
The world is fading fast,
Time has no chains for wedded love!

334

SEGUIDILLA.

TO LOVE.

[_]

The more laborious poetry of Spain is generally disfigured by extravagances that may be a portion of its Saracen ancestry. But its trivial songs have sometimes a mixture of feeling and originality, scarcely inferior to the Greek. Those, however, are perhaps beyond translation.

“Apetece tres cosas
El Amor”, &c.

Young Tyrant of the bow and wings,
Thy altar asks three precious things;

335

The heart's, the world's most precious three,
Courage, and Time, and Constancy!
And Love must have them all, or none:
By Time he's wearied, but not won;
He shrinks from Courage hot and high;
He laughs at tedious Constancy;
But all his raptures, tender, true, sublime,
Are given to Courage, Constancy, and Time.

336

NAPOLEON. 1820.

I hate thee, England! Not that thou
Hast flung me where I perish now:
Not that thy hand has stampt my name
On valour's lips a scoff and shame;
But that I see, and cursing see,
Thy soil, the Temple of the free,
Land of th'unconquerable mind,
Still Champion, Sovereign of mankind!

I hate thee, that thy matchless throne
Shadows no slave on earth, but one;

337

That one, Earth's ban and scorn, the slave
That moulders in this dungeon-cave.
And shall no after legend tell
The glorious strife in which he fell:
When rushing with his bosom gored
Upon the shrinking victor's sword,
The hero sent his dying groan
In sounds like monarchies undone.
Heaven! when in fire my eagles flew
O'er thy red torrent, Waterloo,
Had I but in the turning tide
Plunged my dishonour'd head, and died!
O had I but the heart to die!
I fled—my legions saw me fly.—
Now,—where yon billow darkly dashes,
Must sleep the coward Exile's ashes;
After many a shapeless day,
Wasted, weary, worn away,
After many an agony
Crowding on the sleepless eye;

338

Till, by the living world forgot,
Nor regicide's nor rebel's thought
Glancing tow'rds the distant wave,
Where earthward bent, in dull decay
The ancient Exile wastes away—
I leave the prison for the grave!

And my old murderers one by one
Sink from me, left alone—alone!
Like me with passing splendours curst
And but for me, in evil first.
Tost from a felon's streaming bier,
Sleeps shroudless, base Labedoyere;
Defiling with his gore the clay,
Feasts the slow worm the Traitor Ney;
And Murat's blazing remnants gave
Pollution to the Italian wave.
Fool!—on whose brow the royal ring
I flung in mockery—to fling
Contempt upon the name of king.

339

The peasant musket laid him low,
His knell is rung; what is he now!
His life in guilt—his end in fear,
Spain howling vengeance in his ear,
So sank the man of massacre.
So shall they perish, one and all,
The bloodier rise, the bloodier fall;
Each in his turn of terror laid
Beneath the bullet or the blade;
And every quivering slave shall die
Concocting on his lip the lie,
Spurn'd from life, yet loath to part,
Telling of his loyal heart,
Winding up with weep and wail
His falsehood, idle, odious, stale.

Oh! for the storm of woe and crime,
That swept me upwards once, sublime;
When cunning claim'd, what chance achieved,
'Till the wild dream myself deceived,

340

Half deem'd of more than mortal birth,
Or earthborn, but to trample earth;
A cloud, earth's evil to absorb,
Then stoop in lightnings on its orb;
A planet, from its centre hurl'd,
To dazzle and to waste the world;
A sceptred, desperate, demon thing,
Let loose for mankind's suffering,
While earth my fiery transit eyed,
Trembled, believed, and deified.

'Tis past—the crown in slaughter worn,
From my dark brow in wrath was torn;
I lived—to bear fate's basest blow,
To cower before my proudest foe;—
I lived—by drops my cup to drain,
The rabble's laugh—the den, the chain;
To kiss the dust, and fawn and whine
For added days to days like mine.
Till treason, murder, regicide,
All that was born of man and pride,

341

Turn'd from their recreant Chief in shame;
'Till, ere I perish'd, died my name,
'Till in this den of rock and wave,
All left Napoleon to the grave!

342

THE WINTER'S EVENING.

FROM THE GREEK.

“Κοπτομενη πνοιαις τε και αρρηκτοισι χαλαζαις.” Theocr.

The sun is sinking in the fiery west;
The clouds are rushing on their wild, wet wings;
The lightning, like an eagle from its nest,
In dazzling circles round the mountain springs;
The groaning forest in the whirlwind swings,
Strewing the marble cliffs with branches hoar;
With cries of startled wolves the valley rings:
And when the sullen sounds of earth are o'er,
Ocean lifts up his voice, and thunders on the shore.

343

Now close the portal!—'Tis the hour of hours!
Though ancient Winter lords it o'er the sky,
And the snow thickens on our leafless bowers;
For now the few we love on earth are nigh.
Ianthe! shall the livelong eve pass by
Without one song from that red lip of thine?
Come, fill the bowls, and heap the faggots high!
To birds and flowers let Summer's morning shine,
To nobler man alone the Winter eve's divine.

344

AN ÆSTUARY.

A CALM EVENING.

Look on these waters, with how soft a kiss
They woo the pebbled shore! then steal away,
Like wanton lovers,—but to come again,
And die in music!—There, the bending skies
See all their stars,—and the beach-loving trees,
Osiers and willows, and the watery flowers,
That wreathe their pale roots round the ancient stones,
Make pictures of themselves!

345

MIDNIGHT.

WRITTEN ON THE SEA-SHORE NEAR A LIGHT-HOUSE.

It is the witching hour. The Night
Sits on her cold, meridian height.
And the starry troops are seen
Camping round their ancient queen.
Till upon the Eastern zone
Ascends a rival to her throne.
And the pearly, lunar horn
Shines, but a more silent morn.

Now the hamlet sounds are o'er
Peasant laugh and closing door,

346

And the lazy-ebbing tide
Glistening leaves the seabeach wide.
Yet ever and anon the ear
Listens, with no unpleased fear,
To the dreamy echoes deep
Sighed from the earth's mysterious sleep
The heavings of the elm and oak
As if a spirit in them spoke;
Drowsy sheep-bells, and the chime
Where the distant turrets climb;
Or the hum of waggoner,
Singing, his slow team to cheer;
Mingled with the watch-dog's bark,
Warning rovers of the dark;
Or the bell of midnight toll'd
Dreary o'er the churchyard mould.

But above my casement, wound
With every flower that's sweetest found
On heathy hill or blossom'd mead,
By the virgin's May-morn tread;

347

I see one sleepless, earthly star
Shoot its wild splendours free and far,
Defying night, and cloud, and shower,
The meteor of yon seashore tower.

Now, from ocean comes the gale,
Mix'd with what might seem a wail;
Where some gallant company
Look their last upon the sky.
Folding in its fleecy cloud
The turret, like an idol proud
Glaring in his Indian cave
Over prostrate prince and slave.
Now, afar the mist is blown,
And the ruddy blaze is thrown
Where along the slumbering tide
The anchor'd ships like dolphins ride;
Touching into woofs of light
Sail and shroud, and pennant slight;
Hanging on the village spire
Tissues sweet of azure fire,

348

And with fairy colour'd gleam
Gilding the sweet-tinkling stream,
That beneath the hawthorn-brake
Glitters, like a summer snake,
To where my lowly cottage roof
Hides, from the worldly din aloof,
Nestling in the fragrant twine
Of bushy rose and jessamine.

Now around me, and beneath,
All is slumber, still as death;
In my hand some pale, proud page
Of mankind's high heroic age,
By divinest Virgil sung,
On his Mantuan lilies flung;
Or the lovelorn poet,—he
Who pined by the Propontis' sea;
Or the strain that Sappho wept,
Ere she to her death-bed swept.
Or that Pindar's eagle wing
Dash'd, immortal from the string.

349

Then, in fancy's wayward fit,
I turn to Chaucer's mystic wit;
And in his old, enchanted glass,
See pilgrim, nun, and warrior pass;
Rosy smiles beneath the hood,
Steel-clad bosoms love-subdued,
Tonsured crowns, with roving eye,
All the old-world pageantry!

Or the blacken'd tome unhasp,
Shrined in brazen fold and clasp,
Where in the more than midnight veil
Tells old Alchemy her tale,
Secrets of a darker sphere,
Making the flesh shrink to hear!
How the mighty sigil tamed
The Spirit, while he raved and flamed;
Round the guarded circle wan
Rushing still with wilder ban,
Shaking from his dragon wings
Poisons, and all monstrous things;

350

Till within the crucible
Star-bright rose the master-spell,
And symphonies of earth and air
Told the “Gem of gems” was there!

Or, with curious vision mazed,
I trace the monkish scroll, emblazed
With gorgeous hues, and emblems high,
Legends of church and chivalry;
Kneeling saints, and prelates old,
Monarchs, silk and ermine stol'd,
Cup and crosier, helm and targe,
Cluster'd on the dazzling marge!
While that dazzling marge within
Slumber blindness, pride, and sin.

Thus bewitch'd the moments sweep,
Till the honey-pinion'd sleep,
With his pleasant murmuring,
Seems in my drowzed ear to ring;
And round my old, romantic nook
I cast a superstitious look,

351

As the woodbine's breezy train
Waves across my rustic pane,
And, to fancy's clouded gaze,
Bluer winks the taper's blaze:
Nurse-taught things, that stamp the brain,
Though sullen reason call them vain!
Then, shook off my ghostly fear,
I watch the beacon's flaming sphere;
Or, with awed, thought-wandering eye,
Gaze on the blue Infinity;
Where, before he treads the tomb,
Man beholds the world to come.

Thus charm'd dizziness, unchid,
Alights upon my drooping lid;
And, with due accustom'd prayer,
Is closed the daily count of care;
And the heart is lapp'd in dreams,
Fann'd by fresh, flower-breathing steams
Through the open casement sent;
Till Aurora's Eastern tent

352

Flames with chequer'd rose and gold,
And the radiant clouds are roll'd
Before the solar chariot-yoke,
Like a Persian army broke:
And before his fiery car
Fades and flies the twilight star.

END OF VOLUME FIRST.