From peak to peak, the rattling crags among, Leaps the live thunder! not from one lone cloud, But every mountain now hath found a tongue, And Jura answers, through her misty shroud, Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud!
And this is in the night most glorious night! Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be A sharer in thy fierce and far delight,— A portion of the tempest and of thee! How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea, And the big rain comes dancing to the earth! And now again 'tis black-and now the glee Of the loud hill shakes with its mountain mirth, As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth.
GREECE. (The Giaour.)
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,
Oh 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,
Bequeath'd by bleeding Sire to Son,
Though baffled oft is ever won.
DEATH ON THE FIELD OF BATTLE.-(Lara, Canto II.)
DAY glimmers on the dying and the dead,
The cloven cuirass and the helmless head;
The war-horse, masterless, is on the earth,
And that last gasp hath burst his bloody girth ;
And near, yet quivering with what life remain'd,
The heel that urged him, and the hand that rein'd;
And some, too, near that rolling torrent lie,
Whose waters mock the lip of those that die ;
That panting thirst, which scorches in the breath
Of those that die the soldiers' fiery death,
In vain impels the burning mouth to crave
One drop-the last-to cool it for the grave:
With feeble and convulsive effort swept,
Their limbs along the crimson'd turf have crept,
The faint remains of life such struggles waste;
But yet they reach the stream, and bend to taste;
They feel its freshness, and almost partake—
No further thirst have they to slake;
It is unquench'd, and yet they feel it not;
It was an agony-but now forgot!
THE DYING GLADIATOR.-(Childe Harold.)
I SEE before me the Gladiator lie;
He leans upon his hand; his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony,
And his drooped head sinks gradually low;
And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,
Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now
The arena swims around him; he is gone,
Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won.
He heard it, but he heeded not; his eyes
Were with his heart, and that was far away:
He recked not of the life he lost, nor prize:
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay;
There were his young barbarians all at play,
There was their Dacian mother-he, their sire,
Butchered to make a Roman holiday.
All this rushed with his blood. Shall he expire,
And unavenged? Arise, ye Goths, and glut your ire.
COLERIDGE was born at Bristol in 1772, and died in 1834.
lyrical and dramatic poems, all distinguished by profound and original thought, and powerful imagination.
HYMN BEFORE SUNRISE IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI.
HAST thou a charm to stay the morning star
In his steep course? So long he seems to pause
On thy bald awful head, O sovran Blanc !
The Arve and Arveiron at thy base
Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful form!
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently! Around thee and above,
Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black,
An ebon mass; methinks thou piercest it,
As with a wedge! But when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity!
O dread and silent mount! I gazed upon thee,
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,
Didst vanish from my thought; entranced in prayer,
I worshipped the Invisible alone.
Once more, hoar mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks,
Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard,
Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene,
Into the depth of clouds that veil thy breast-
Thou too, again, stupendous mountain! thou,
That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low
In adoration, upward from thy base,
Slow travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears,
Solemnly seemest, like a vapoury cloud,
To rise before me.-Rise, O ever rise;
Rise, like a cloud of incense, from the earth!
Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven-
Great Hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.
TO BRITAIN. (Ode to the Departing Year.)
Not yet enslaved, not wholly vile,
O Albion! O my mother isle!
Thy valleys, fair as Eden's bowers,
Glitter green with sunny showers ;
Thy grassy uplands' gentle swells
Echo to the bleat of flocks—
Those grassy hills, those glittering dells
Proudly ramparted with rocks-
And Ocean, 'mid his uproar wild,
Speaks safety to his island-child!
Hence, for many a fearless age
Has social Quiet loved thy shore !
Nor ever proud invader's rage
Or sack'd thy towers, or stained thy fields with gore.
WITH other ministrations thou, O Nature,
Healest thy wandering and distempered child!
Thou pourest on him thy soft influences,
Thy sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweets,
Thy melodies of woods, and winds, and waters,
Till he relent, and can no more endure
To be a jarring and a dissonant thing
Amid this general dance and minstrelsy;
But, bursting into tears, wins back his way,
His angry spirit healed and harmonized
By the benignant touch of love and beauty.
SHELLEY was born in 1792, and died in 1822. His works are chiefly lyrical. They display intense susceptibility to the beautiful, and great felicity in giving apt expression to subtle thought and delicate sentiment.
THE warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing,
The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying,
And the year,
On the earth her deathbed, in a shroud of leaves dead,
Is lying.
Come, months, come away,
From November to May,
In your saddest array;
Follow the bier
Of the dead cold year,
And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.
The chill rain is falling, the night-worm is crawling,
The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling
The blythe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone
To his dwelling;
Come, months, come away,
Put on white, black, and grey,
Let your light sisters play—
To follow the bier
Of the dead-cold year,
And make her grave green with tear on tear.
THE DIRGE FOR THE OLD YEAR.
ORPHAN hours, the year is dead,
Come and sigh, come and weep!
Merry hours, smile instead,
For the year is but asleep :
See it smiles as it is sleeping,
Mocking your untimely weeping.
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