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SUMMER AND WINTER.

It was a bright and cheerful afternoon,
Towards the end of the sunny month of June,
When the north wind congregates in crowds
The floating mountains of the silver clouds
From the horizon — and the stainless sky
Opens beyond them like eternity.

All things rejoiced beneath the sun; the weeds,
The river, and the corn-fields, and the reeds;
The willow leaves that glanced in the light breeze,
And the firm foliage of the larger trees.

It was a winter such as when birds die
In the deep forests; and the fishes lie
Stiffened in the translucent ice, which makes
Even the mud and slime of the warm lakes
A wrinkled clod as hard as brick; and when,
Among their children, comfortable men

Gather about great fires, and yet feel cold:
Alas then for the homeless beggar old!

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Keit, int heard to: -fáite colts glowed
The nie-visszting Great food

A jue é even to Heavens of anze:
kad me geamed many a briga seprichre
Off whose pre vzny, Time, a f the pleasure
Tiere to spie Trexit, tad tever made erasure;
But every thing meanen was dear

As in the voxiptor's thong; and there
The wreata of stony myrtle, ivy and pine,

Like winter leaves o'ergrown by moulded snow,
Seemed only not to move and grow

Because the crystal silence of the air

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

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

Prophesyings which grew articulate

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

STROPHE α. I.

Naples ! thou Heart of men which ever pantest
Naked, beneath the lidless eye of heaven!
Elysian City which to calm inchantest

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

Metropolis of a ruined Paradise

Long lost, late won, and yet but half regained! Bright Altar of the bloodless sacrifice,

Which armed Victory offers up

To Love, the flower-enchained!

unstained

Thou which wert once, and then didst cease to be,
Now art, and henceforth ever shalt be, free,
If Hope, and Truth, and Justice can avail,
Hail, hail, all hail !

STROPHE B. 2.

Thou youngest giant birth

Which from the groaning earth

Leap'st, clothed in armour of impenetrable scale !

Last of the Intercessors !

Who 'gainst the Crowned Transgressors

Pleadest before God's love! Arrayed in Wisdom's mail, Wave thy lightning lance in mirth

Nor let thy high heart fail,

Though from their hundred gates the leagued Oppressors,
With hurried legions move!
Hail, hail, all hail !

ANTISTROPHE α.

What though Cimmerian Anarchs dare blaspheme
Freedom and thee? thy shield is as a mirror
To make their blind slaves see, and with fierce gleam
To turn his hungry sword upon the wearer;

A new Acteon's error

Shall their's have been ― devoured by their own hounds!
Be thou like the imperial Basilisk

Killing thy foe with unapparent wounds!
Gaze on oppression, till at that dread risk
Aghast she pass from the Earth's disk:
Fear not, but gaze for freemen mightier grow,
And slaves more feeble, gazing on their foe;
If Hope and Truth and Justice may avail,
Thou shalt be great - All hail !

ANTISTROPHE ß. 2.

From Freedom's form divine,
From Nature's inmost shrine,

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