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When faintness, the last mortal birth of pain, And apathy of limb, the dull beginning

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Of the cold staggering race which death is winning
Steals vein by vein and pulse by pulse away;
Yet so relieving the o'ertortured clay,
To him appears renewal of his breath,
And freedom the mere numbness of his chain;
And then he talks of life, and how again
He feels his spirit soaring; albeit weak,
And of the fresher air, which he would seek;
And as he whispers knows not that he gasps,
That his thin finger feels not what it clasps,
And so the film comes o'er him - and the dizzy
Chamber swims round and round and shadows

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At which he vainly catches, flit and gleam,
Till the last rattle chokes the strangled scream.
And all is ice and blackness, and the earth
That which it was the moment ere our birth.
There is no hope for nations! Search the page
Of many thousand years
the daily scene,
The flow and ebb of each recurring age,
The everlasting to be which hath been,
Hath taught us nought or little: still we lean 60
On things that rot beneath our weight, and wear
Our strength away in wrestling with the air;
For 'tis our nature strikes us down: the beasts
Slaughter'd in hourly hecatombs for feasts
Are of as high an order they must go
Even where their driver goads them, though to
slaughter.

Ye men, who pour your blood for kings as water,
What have they given your children in return?
A heritage of servitude and woes,

A blindfold bondage where your hire is blows. 70
What? do not yet the red-hot ploughshares burn,
O'er which you stumble in a false ordeal,
And deem this proof of loyalty the real;
Kissing the hand that guides you to your scars,
And glorying as you tread the glowing bars?
All that your sires have left you, all that time
Bequeaths of free, and history of sublime,
Spring from a different theme! Ye see and read,
Admire and sigh, and then succumb and bleed!
Save the few spirits, who, despite of all,
And worse than all, the sudden crimes engender'd
By the down-thundering of the prison-wall,
And thirst to swallow the sweet waters tender'd,
Gushing from freedom's fountains - when the
crowd,

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Madden'd with centuries of drought, are loud,
And trample on each other to obtain
The cup which brings oblivion of a chain
Heavy and sore, in which long yoked they
plough'd
The sand,

or if there sprung the yellow grain,

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Glory and empire! once upon these towers
With freedom - godlike triad! how ye sate!
The league of mightiest nations, in those hours
When Venice was an envy, might abate,
But did not quench, her spirit — in her fate
All were enwrapp'd: the feasted monarchs knew
And loved their hostess, nor could learn to hate,
Although they humbled - with the kingly few
The many felt, for from all days and climes
She was the voyager's worship; —even her crimes
Were of the softer order-born of love,
She drank no blood, nor fatten'd on the dead,
But gladden'd where her harmless conquests
spread;

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For these restored the cross, that from above Hallow'd her sheltering banners, which incessant Flew between earth and the unholy crescent, Which, if it waned and dwindled, earth may thank The city it has clothed in chains, which clank Now, creaking in the ears of those who owe 119 The name of freedom to her glorious struggles; Yet she but shares with them a common woe, And call'd the "kingdom" of a conquering foe, But knows what all - and, most of all, we know With what set gilded terms a tyrant juggles!

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The name of commonwealth is past and gone
O'er the three fractions of the groaning globe;
Venice is crush'd, and Holland deigns to own
A sceptre, and endures the purple robe;

If the free Switzer yet bestrides alone
His chainless mountains, 'tis but for a time, 130
For tyranny of late is cunning grown,
And in its own good season tramples down
The sparkles of our ashes. One great clime,
Whose vigorous offspring by dividing ocean,
Are kept apart and nursed in the devotion
Of freedom, which their fathers fought for, and

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Better, though each man's life-blood were a river,
That it should flow, and overflow, than creep 150
Through thousand lazy channels in our veins,
Damn'd like the dull canal with locks and chains,
And moving, as a sick man in his sleep,
Three paces, and then faltering: - better be
Where the extinguish'd Spartans still are free,
In their proud charnel of Thermopylæ,
Than stagnate in our marsh, — or o'er the deep
Fly, and one current to the ocean add,
One spirit to the souls our fathers had,
One freeman more, America, to thee!

DON JUAN

FROM CANTO III

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Was whipt at college,- a harsh sire,-odd spouse,

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For the first Mrs. Milton left his house.

All these are, certes, entertaining facts,

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Like Shakespeare's stealing deer, Lord Bacon's bribes;

Like Titus' youth, and Cæsar's earliest acts; Like Burns (whom Doctor Currie well describes);

Like Cromwell's pranks; - but although truth

exacts

These amiable descriptions from the scribes, As most essential to their hero's story, They do not much contribute to his glory.

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All are not moralists, like Southey, when
He prated to the world of "Pantisocracy";
Or Wordsworth, unexcised, unhired, who then
Season'd his peddler poems with democracy:
Or Coleridge, long before his flighty pen

Let to the Morning Post its aristocracy; When he and Southey, following the same path, Espoused two partners (milliners of Bath).

Such names at present cut a convict figure, The very Botany Bay in moral geography; Their loyal treason, renegado rigour,

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Are good manure for their more bare biography. Wordsworth's last quarto, by the way, is bigger Than any since the birthday of typography; A drowsy, frowzy poem call'd The Excursion, Writ in a manner which is my aversion.

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He there builds up a formidable dike
Between his own and others' intellect;
But Wordsworth's poem, and his followers, like
Johanna Southcote's Shiloh, and her sect,
Are things which in this century don't strike
The public mind so few are the elect;
And the new births of both their stale virginities
Have proved but dropsies, taken for divinities.

But let me to my story: I must own,

If I have any fault, it is digression — Leaving my people to proceed alone, While I soliloquize beyond expression;

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But these are my addresses from the throne,
Which put off business to the ensuing session,
Forgetting each omission is a loss to
The world, not quite so great as Ariosto.

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I know that what our neighbours called longueurs (We've not so good a word, but have the thing, In that complete perfection which ensures

An epic from Bob Southey every spring -) Form not the true temptation which allures The reader; but 'twould not be hard to bring

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Sure my invention must be down at zero,
And I grown one of many "wooden spoons"
Of verse (the name with which we Cantabs please
To dub the last of honours in degrees). 880

THE GLORY THAT WAS GREECE

Clime of the unforgotten brave!
Whose land from plain to mountain-cave
Was Freedom's home, or Glory's grave!
Shrine of the mighty! can it be
That this is all remains of thee?
Approach, thou craven crouching slave:
Say, is not this Thermopyla?

These waters blue that round you lave,
O servile offspring of the free
Pronounce what sea, what shore is this?
The gulf, the rock of Salamis !
These scenes, their story not unknown,
Arise, and make again your own;
Snatch from the ashes of your sires
The embers of their former fires;
And he who in the strife expires
Will add to theirs a name of fear,
That Tyranny shall quake to hear,
And leave his sons a hope, a fame,
They too will rather die than shame:
For Freedom's battle once begun,
Bequeathed by bleeding sire to son,
Though baffled oft is ever won.
Bear witness, Greece, thy living page!
Attest it many a deathless age!
While kings, in dusty darkness hid,
Have left a nameless pyramid,
Thy heroes, though the general doom
Hath swept the column from their tomb,
A mightier monument command,
The mountains of their native land!
There points thy Muse to stranger's eye
The graves of those that cannot die!
'Twere long to tell, and sad to trace,
Each step from splendour to disgrace;
Enough- no foreign foe could quell
Thy soul, till from itself it fell;
Yes! Self-abasement paved the way
To villain-bonds and despot sway.

KNOW YE THE LAND?

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Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime?

Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the

turtle,

Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime?

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And feed deep thought with many a dream,
And lingering pause and lightly tread;
Fond wretch! as if her step disturb'd the dead!
Away! we know that tears are vain,

That Death nor heeds nor hears distress;
Will this unteach us to complain!

Or make one mourner weep the less! And thou who tell'st me to forget, Thy looks are wan, thine eyes are wet.

STANZAS FOR MUSIC

There be none of Beauty's daughters With a magic like thee;

And like music on the waters

Is thy sweet voice to me: When, as if its sound were causing The charmed ocean's pausing, The waves lie still and gleaming, And the lull'd winds seem dreaming.

And the midnight moon is weaving

Her bright chain o'er the deep; Whose breast is gently heaving,

As an infant's asleep:

So the spirit bows before thee,
To listen and adore thee;

With a full but soft emotion,

Like the swell of Summer's ocean.

I I

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Her first sweet kisses, have been dear to me;
If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beast

I consciously have injured, but still loved
And cherished these my kindred; then forgive 15
This boast, beloved brethren, and withdraw
No portion of your wonted favour now!

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Mother of this unfathomable world! Favour my solemn song, for I have loved Thee ever, and thee only; I have watched Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps, And my heart ever gazes on the depth Of thy deep mysteries. I have made my bed In charnels and on coffins, where black death Keeps record of the trophies won from thee, 25 Hoping to still these obstinate questionings Of thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghost, Thy messenger, to render up the tale

Of what we are. In lone and silent hours, When night makes a weird sound of its OWD stillness,

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But half of our weary task was done

When the clock struck the hour for retiring; And we heard the distant and random gun That the foe was sullenly firing.

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To render up thy charge: . . . and, though ne'e:

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There was a Poet whose untimely tomb No human hands with pious reverence reared, But the charmed eddies of autumnal winds Built o'er his mouldering bones a pyramid Of mouldering leaves in the waste wilderness:A lovely youth, - no mourning maiden decked 55 With weeping flowers, or votive cypress wreath, The lone couch of his everlasting sleep: Gentle, and brave, and generous, no lorn bard Breathed o'er his dark fate one melodious sigh: He lived, he died, he sung, in solitude. Strangers have wept to hear his passionate notes, And virgins, as unknown he passed, have pined

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