Within the surface of Time's fleeting river

Its wrinkled image lies, as then it lay Immovably unquiet, and for ever

It trembles, but it cannot pass away! The voices of thy bards and sages thunder With an earth-awakening blast Through the caverns of the past;

storms.

III.

Man, the imperial shape, then multiplied
His generations under the pavilion
Of the Sun's throne: palace and pyramid,

Temple and prison, to many a swarming million,

Were, as to mountain-wolves their ragged caves. This human living multitude

Was savage, cunning, blind, and rude, For thou wert not; but o'er the populous solitude, Like one fierce cloud over a waste of waves, Hung tyranny; beneath, sate deified The sister-pest, congregator of slaves;

Into the shadow of her pinions wide, Anarchs and priests who feed on gold and blood, Till with the stain their inmost souls are dyed, Drove the astonish'd herds of men from every side..

IV.

The nodding promontories, and blue isles,

And cloud-like mountains, and dividuous waves Of Greece, bask'd glorious in the open smiles Of favouring heaven: from their enchanted caves Prophetic echoes flung dim melody

On the unapprehensive wild. The vine, the corn, the olive mild, Grew savage yet, to human use unreconciled; And, like unfolded flowers beneath the sea, Like the man's thought dark in the infant's brain,

Like aught that is which wraps what is to be, Art's deathless dreams lay veil'd by many a

vein

Of Parian stone; and yet a speechless child, Verse murmur'd, and Philosophy did strain Her lidless eyes for thee; when o'er the Ægean main

V.

Athens arose a city such as vision

Builds from the purple crags and silver towers Of battlemented cloud, as in derision Of kingliest masonry: the ocean-floors Pave it; the evening sky pavilions it; Its portals are inhabited

By thunder-zoned winds, each head

aghast :

A winged sound of joy, and love and wonder,
Which soars where Expectation never flew,
Rending the veil of space and time asunder!
One ocean feeds the clouds, and streams, and
dew;

One sun illumines heaven; one spirit vast
With life and love makes chaos ever new,
As Athens doth the world with thy delight re-

new.

VII.

Then Rome was, and from thy deep bosom fairest, Like a wolf-cub from a Cadmæan Mænad,* She drew the milk of greatness, though thy dearest From that Elysian food was yet unwean'd; And many a deed of terrible uprightness

By thy sweet love was sanctifed; And in thy smile, and by thy side, Saintly Camillus lived, and firm Atilius died. But when tears stain'd thy robe of vestal whiteness,

And gold profaned thy capitolian throne, Thou didst desert, with spirit-winged lightness, The senate of the tyrants: they sunk prone Slaves of one tyrant: Palatinus sigh'd Faint echoes of Ionian song; that tone Thou didst delay to hear, lamenting to disown.

VIII.

From what Hyrcanian glen or frozen hill,
Or piny promontory of the Arctic main,
Or utmost islet inaccessible,

Didst thou lament the ruin of thy reign,
Teaching the woods and waves, and desert rocks.
And every Naiad's ice-cold urn,
To talk in echoes sad and stern,
Of that sublimest lore which man had dared un-
learn?

For neither didst thou watch the wizard flocks Of the Scald's dreams, nor haunt the Druid's sleep.

What if the tears rain'd through thy shatter'd locks

Were quickly dried? for thou didst groan, not

weep,

When from its sea of death to kill and burn,

* See the Bacche of Euripides.

The Galilean serpent forth did creep,
And made thy world an undistinguishable heap.

IX.

A thousand years the Earth cried, Where art thou?

And then the shadow of thy coming fell
On Saxon Alfred's olive-cinctured brow:
And many a warrior-peopled citadel,

Like rocks which fire lifts out of the flat deep,
Arose in sacred Italy,

Frowning o'er the tempestuous sea

Of kings, and priests, and slaves, in tower-crown'd majesty ;

That multitudinous anarchy did sweep,

And burst around their walls, like idle foam, Whilst from the human spirit's deepest deep, Strange melody with love and awe struck dumb.

Dissonant arms; and Art, which cannot die,

With divine wand traced on our earthly home Fit imagery to pave heaven's everlasting dome.

X.

Thou huntress swifter than the Moon! thou terror Of the world's wolves! thou bearer of the quiver, Whose sun-like shafts pierce tempest-winged Error,

As light may pierce the clouds when they dis

sever

In the calm regions of the orient day!

Luther caught thy wakening glance: Like lightning, from his leaden lance Reflected, it dissolved the visions of the trance In which, as in a tomb, the nations lay;

And England's prophets hail'd thee as their

queen,

In songs whose music cannot pass away,

Though it must flow for ever: not unseen Before the spirit-sighted countenance

Of Milton didst thou pass, from the sad scene Beyond whose night he saw, with a dejected mien.

XI.

The eager hours and unreluctant years

As on a dawn-illumined mountain stood, Trampling to silence their loud hopes and fears, Darkening each other with their multitude, And cried aloud, Liberty! Indignation

Answer'd Pity from her cave; Death grew pale within the grave, And desolation howl'd to the destroyer, Save! When like heaven's sun, girt by the exhalation Of its own glorious light, thou didst arise, Chasing thy foes from nation unto nation Like shadows: as if day had cloven the skies At dreaming midnight o'er the western wave, Men started, staggering with a glad surprise, Under the lightnings of thine unfamiliar eyes.

XII.

How like Bacchanals of blood

Round France, the ghastly vintage, stood Destruction's sceptred slaves, and folly's mitred

brood!

When one, like them, but mightier far than they, The Anarch of thine own bewilder'd powers, Rose: armies mingled in obscure array

Like clouds with clouds, darkening the sacred bowers

Of serene heaven. He, by the past pursued, Rests with those dead, but unforgotten hours, Whose ghosts scare victor kings in their ancestral towers.

XIII.

England yet sleeps: was she not call'd of old?
Spain calls her now, as with its thrilling thunder
Vesuvius wakens Etna, and the cold
Snow-crags by its reply are cloven in sunder:
O'er the lit waves every Æolian isle

From Pithecusa to Pelorus

Howls, and leaps, and glares in chorus: They cry, Be dim, ye lamps of heaven suspended o'er us.

Her chains are threads of gold, she need but smile

And they dissolve; but Spain's were links of

steel,

Till bit to dust by virtue's keenest file.

Twins of a single destiny! appeal

To the eternal years enthroned before us,
In the dim West; impress us from a seal,
All ye have thought and done! Time cannot
dare conceal.

XIV.

Tomb of Arminius! render up thy dead,

Till, like a standard from a watch-tower's staff, His soul may stream over the tyrant's head! Thy victory shall be his epitaph, Wild Bacchanal of truth's mysterious wine, King-deluded Germany,

His dead spirit lives in thee. Why do we fear or hope? thou art already free! And thou, lost Paradise of this divine

And glorious world! thou flowery wilder

ness!

Thou island of eternity: thou shrine

Where desolation, clothed with loveliness, Worships the thing thou wert! O Italy, Gather thy blood into thy heart; repiess The beasts who make their dens thy sacred palaces.

XV.

O, that the free would stamp the impious name
Of**** into the dust! or write it there,

So that this blot upon the page of fame
Were as a serpent's path, which the light air
Erases, and the flat sands close behind!
Ye the oracle have heard:
Lift the victory-flashing sword,

In ominous eclipse? A thousand years, Bred from the slime of deep oppression's den,

Dyed all thy liquid light with blood and tears, Till thy sweet stars could weep the stain away.

Which weak itself as stubble, yet can bind Into a mass, irrefragably firm, The axes and the rods which awe mankind; The sound has poison in it, 'tis the sperm Of what makes life foul, cankerous, and abhorr'd;

Disdain not thou, at thine appointed term,
To set thine armed heel on this reluctant worm.
XVI.

O, that the wise from their bright minds would

kindle

Such lamps within the dome of this dim world, That the pale name of PRIEST might shrink and dwindle

Into the hell from which it first was hurl'd,
A scoff of impious pride from fiends impure;

Till human thoughts might kneel alone
Each before the judgment-throne

Of its own aweless soul, or of the power unknown! O, that the words which make the thoughts obscure

From which they spring, as clouds of glimmering dew

From a white lake blot heaven's blue portraiture, Were stript of their thin masks and various hue,

And frowns and smiles and splendours not their own,

Till in the nakedness of false and true

They stand before their Lord, each to receive its due.

XVII.

He who taught man to vanquish whatsoever

Can be between the cradle and the grave, Crown'd him the King of Life. O vain endeavour!

If on his own high will, a willing slave, He has enthroned the oppression and the oppressor. What if earth can clothe and feed Amplest millions at their need,

And power in thought be as the tree within the seed?

Or what if Art, an ardent intercessor

Diving on fiery wings to Nature's throne, Checks the great mother stooping to caress her,

And cries: Give me, thy child, dominion Over all height and depth? if Life can breed New wants, and wealth from those who toil and groan

Rend of thy gifts and hers a thousandfold for

one.

XVIII.

Come Thou, but lead out of the inmost cave
Of man's deep spirit, as the morning-star
Beckons the Sun from the Eoan wave,

Wisdom. I hear the pennons of her car
Self-moving, like cloud charioted by flame;
Comes she not, and come ye not,
Rulers of eternal thought,

To judge, with solemn truth, life's ill-apportion'd lot?

Blind Love, and equal Justice, and the Fame
Of what has been, the Hope of what will be!
O, Liberty! if such could be thy name,
Wert thou disjoin'd from these, or they from

thee:
If thine or theirs were treasures to be bought

By blood or tears, have not the wise and free Wept tears, and blood like tears? The solemn harmony

Of spirits passing through the streets; and heard
The Mountain's slumberous voice at intervals
Thrill through those roofless halls;
The oracular thunder penetrating shook
The listening soul in my suspended blood;
I felt that Earth out of her deep heart spoke-
I felt, but heard not:-through white columns
glow'd

The isle-sustaining Ocean flood,

A plane of light between two Heavens of azure:
Around me gleam'd many a bright sepulchre
Of whose pure beauty, Time, as if his pleasure
Were to spare Death, had never made erasure;
But every living lineament was clear
As in the sculptor's thought; and there
The wreaths of stony myrtle, ivy and pine,
Like winter leaves o'ergrown by moulded snow,
Seem'd only not to move and grow
Because the crystal silence of the air

Weigh'd on their life; even as the Power divine,
Which then lull'd all things, brooded upon mine.

EPODE 11. a.

Then gentle winds arose, With many a mingled close Of wild Eolian sound and mountain odour keen; And where the Baian ocean Welters with air-like motion, Within, above, around its bowers of starry green.

The Author has connected many recollections of his visit to Pompeii and Baie with the enthusiasm ex

cited by the intelligence of the proclamation of a Con

stitutional Government at Naples. This has given a tinge of picturesque and descriptive imagery to the introductory Epodes which depicture these scenes, and some of the majestic feelings permanently connected with the scene of this animating event.-Author's Note. + Pompeii.

Moving the sea-flowers in those purple caves,
Even as the ever stormless atmosphere
Floats o'er the Elysian realm,

It bore me like an Angel, o'er the waves
Of sunlight, whose swift pinnace of dewy air
No storm can overwhelm;
I sail'd, where ever flows
Under the calm Serene

A spirit of deep emotion,
From the unknown graves

Of the dead kings of Melody.*
Shadowy Aornos darken'd o'er the helm
The horizontal ether; heaven stript bare
Its depths over Elysium, where the prow
Made the invisible water white as snow;
From that Typhæan mount, Inarime
There stream'd a sunlike vapour, like the standard
Of some ethereal host;

Whilst from all the coast,

Louder and louder, gathering round, there wan.

der'd

Over the oracular woods and divine sea

Prophesyings which grew articulate

ANTISTROPHE α. y.

STROPHE &. 1.

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

The mutinous air and sea! they round thee,

even

As sleep round Love, are driven !
Metropolis of a ruin'd Paradise

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

Which armed Victory offers up unstain'd
To Love, the flower-enchain'd!

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

STROPHE 3. 2.

Thou youngest giant birth

Which from the groaning earth

From land to land re-echoed solemnly, Till silence became music? From the ean* To the cold Alps, eternal Italy

Starts to hear thine! The Sea Which paves the desert streets of Venice laughs In light and music; widow'd Genoa wan, By moonlight spells ancestral epitaphs, Murmuring, where is Doria? fair Milan, Within whose veins long ran The viper'st palsying venom, lifts her heel To bruise his head. The signal and the seal (If Hope and Truth and Justice can avail) Art Thou of all these hopes.-O hail!

From eyes of quenchless hope Rome tears the priestly cope,

Last of the Intercessors!

Who 'gainst the Crown'd Transgressors Pleadest before God's love! Array'd in Wisdon'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 σ..

What though Cimmerian Anarchs dare blaspheme
Freedom and thee? thy shie d 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-devour'd by their own hounds!

Homer and Virgil.

An athlete stript to run
From a remoter station

For the high prize lost on Philippi's shore,-
As then Hope, Truth, and Justice did avail,
So now may Fraud and Wrong! O hail!

EPODE 1. 3.

Hear ye the march as of the Earth-born Forms
Array'd against the ever-living Gods?
The crash and darkness of a thousand storms
Bursting their inaccessible abodes

Of crags and thunder-clouds?
See ye the banners blazon'd to the day,

Inwrought with emblems of barbaric pride? Dissonant threats kill Silence far away, The serene Heaven which wraps our Eden wide

With iron light is dyed,

Era, the Island of Circe.

The viper was the armorial device of the Visconti, tyrants of Milan