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.

116

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.

117

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.

118

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.

119

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.

120

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.

121

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.

122

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.

123

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.

124

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.

125

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.

126

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.

127

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!

128

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.

129

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.

130

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.