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A light broke in upon my brain
It was the carol of a bird;
It ceased, and then it came again,

The sweetest song ear ever heard;
And mine was thankful, till my eyes
Ran over with the glad surprise,
And they that moment could not see
I was the mate of misery;

But then by dull degrees came back
My senses to their wonted track,
I saw the dungeon walls and floor
Close slowly round me as before,
I saw the glimmer of the sun
Creeping as it before had done,
But through the crevice where it came
That bird was perch'd, as fond and tame,
And tamer than upon the tree;

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I never saw its like before,

I ne'er shall see its likeness more:
It seem'd, like me, to want a mate,
But was not half so desolate,
And it was come to love me when
None lived to love me so again,
And cheering from my dungeon's brink,
Had brought me back to feel and think.
I know not if it late were free,

Or broke its cage to perch on mine,
But knowing well captivity,

Sweet bird, I could not wish for thine!

Or if it were, in wingèd guise,

A visitant from Paradise;

For Heaven forgive that thought! the while Which made me both to weep and smile;

I sometimes deem'd that it might be

My brother's soul come down to me;
But then at last away it flew,
And then 'twas mortal - well I knew,
For he would never thus have flown,
And left me twice so doubly lone -
Lone, as the corse within its shroud;
Lone, as a solitary cloud,

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A single cloud on a sunny day, While all the rest of heaven is clear, A frown upon the atmosphere,

That hath no business to appear

When skies are blue and earth is gay.

A kind of change came in my fate,
My keepers grew compassionate:

I know not what had made them so,
They were inured to sights of woe;
But so it was - my broken chain
With links unfasten'd did remain,
And it was liberty to stride

Along my cell from side to side,
And up and down, and then athwart,
And tread it over every part;
And round the pillars one by one,
Returning where my walk begun,
Avoiding only, as I trod,

My brothers' graves without a sod;
For if I thought with heedless tread
My step profaned their lowly bed,
My breath came gaspingly and thick,
And my crush'd heart fell blind and sick.

I made a footing in the wall,

It was not therefrom to escape,

For I had buried one and all

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And seem'd to say them all for me!

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A lovely bird, with azure wings,
And song that said a thousand things,

No partner in my misery;

I thought of this, and I was glad,
For thought of them had made me mad;
But I was curious to ascend

To my barr'd windows, and to bend
Once more, upon the mountains high,
The quiet of a loving eye.

I saw them and they were the same,
They were not changed like me in frame;
I saw their thousand years of snow
On high — their wide long lake below,
And the blue Rhone in fullest flow;
I heard the torrents leap and gush
O'er channell'd rock and broken bush;
I saw the white-wall'd distant town,
And whiter sails go skimming down;
And then there was a little isle,
Which in my very face did smile,

The only one in view:

A small green isle, it seem'd no more,
Scarce broader than my dungeon floor;
But in it there were three tall trees,
And o'er it blew the mountain breeze,
And by it there were waters flowing,

And on it there were young flowers growing,

Of gentle breath and hue.

The fish swam by the castle wall,

And they seem'd joyous, each and all;

The eagle rode the rising blast,
Methought he never flew so fast

As then to me he seem'd to fly,

And then new tears came in my eye,
And I felt troubled — and would fain
I had not left my recent chain;
And when I did descend again,
The darkness of my dim abode
Fell on me as a heavy load;
It was as is a new-dug grave,
Closing o'er one we sought to save.
And yet my glance, too much opprest,
Had almost need of such a rest.

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And half I felt as they were come
To tear me from a second home:
With spiders I had friendship made,
And watch'd them in their sullen trade,
Had seen the mice by moonlight play,
And why should I feel less than they?
We were all inmates of one place,
And I, the monarch of each race,
Had power to kill — yet, strange to tell!
In quiet we had learn'd to dwell -
My very chains and I grew friends,
So much a long communion tends
To make us what we are:- even I
Regain'd my freedom with a sigh.

ODE

Oh Venice! Venice! when thy marble walls Are level with the waters, there shall be

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A cry of nations o'er thy sunken halls,
A loud lament along the sweeping sea!
If I, a northern wanderer, weep for thee,
What should thy sons do? - any thing but weep:
And yet they only murmur in their sleep.

In contrast with their fathers as the slime,
The dull green ooze of the receding deep,
Is with the dashing of the spring-tide foam, ΙΟ
That drives the sailor shipless to his home,

Are they to those that were; and thus they creep,
Crouching and crab-like, through their sapping

streets.

Oh! agony
- that centuries should reap
No mellower harvest! Thirteen hundred years
Of wealth and glory turn'd to dust and tears;
And every monument the stranger meets,
Church, palace, pillar, as a mourner greets;
And even the Lion all subdued appears,

And the harsh sound of the barbarian drum, 20
With dull and daily dissonance, repeats

The echo of thy tyrant's voice along

The soft waves, once all musical to song,
That heaved beneath the moonlight with the throng
Of gondolas and to the busy hum

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Of cheerful creatures, whose most sinful deeds
Were but the overbeating of the heart,
And flow of too much happiness, which needs
The aid of age to turn its course apart
From the luxuriant and voluptuous flood
Of sweet sensations battling with the blood.
But these are better than the gloomy errors.
The weeds of nations in their last decay,
When vice walks forth with her unsoften'd terrors.
And mirth is madness, and but smiles to slay;
And hope is nothing but a false delay,

The sick man's lightning half an hour ere death,

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
Chamber swims round and round

busy,

and the dizzy and shadows

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,

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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;

III

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!

IV

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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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). 744

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

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

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Leaving my people to proceed alone,
While I soliloquize beyond expression;
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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O Hesperus! thou bringest all good things.
Home to the weary, to the hungry cheer,
To the young bird the parent's brooding wings,
The welcome stall to the o'erlabour'd steer;
Whate'er of peace about our hearthstone clings,
Whate'er our household gods protect of dear,
Are gather'd round us by thy look of rest;
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Thou bring'st the child, too, to the mother's breast.

Soft hour! which wakes the wish and melts the heart

Of those who sail the seas, on the first day
When they from their sweet friends are torn apart;
Or fills with love the pilgrim on his way
As the far bell of vesper makes him start,
Seeming to weep the dying day's decay;
Is this a fancy which our reason scorns?
Ah! surely nothing dies but something mourns.

When Nero perish'd by the justest doom
Which ever the destroyer yet destroy'd,

Amidst the roar of liberated Rome,

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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).
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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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