As on a dawn-illumined mountain Of serene heaven. He, by the past stood, Trampling to silence their loud hopes and fears, Darkening each other with their multitude, And cried aloud, Liberty! Indignation Answered Pity from her cave; Death grew pale within the grave, And Desolation howled to the destroyer, Save! When like heaven's sun girt by the Of its own glorious light, thou didst pursued, Rests with those dead, but unforgotten hours, Whose ghosts scare victor kings in their ancestral towers. XIII England yet sleeps: was she not called 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: Chasing thy foes from nation unto O'er the lit waves every Æolian isle From Pithecusa to Pelorus chorus: 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 Till bit to dust by virtue's keenest file. Thou heaven of earth! what spells could | To the eternal years enthroned before us, Till thy sweet stars could weep the Tomb of Arminius! render up thy dead, stain away; How like Bacchanals of blood Till, like a standard from a watch tower's staff, And cries: Give me, thy child, When the bolt has pierced its brain; dominion Over all height and depth? if Life can As summer clouds dissolve, unburthened 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 illapportioned 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 disjoined 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 The solemn harmony XIX Paused, and the spirit of that mighty singing To its abyss was suddenly withdrawn; Then, as a wild swan, when sublimely winging Its path athwart the thunder-smoke of dawn, Sinks headlong through the aërial golden light On the heavy sounding plain, ARETHUSA I ARETHUSA arose From her couch of snows In the Acroceraunian mountains,From cloud and from crag, With many a jag, Shepherding her bright fountains. She leapt down the rocks, With her rainbow locks Streaming among the streams;Her steps paved with green The downward ravine Which slopes to the western gleams: And gliding and springing She went, ever singing, In murmurs as soft as sleep; The Earth seemed to love her, And Heaven smiled above her, As she lingered towards the deep. II Then Alpheus bold, On his glacier cold, With his trident the mountains strook And opened a chasm In the rocks;--with the spasm All Erymanthus shook. And the black south wind The urns of the silent snow, The bars of the springs below Seen through the torrent's sweep, III "Oh, save me! Oh, guide me! And bid the deep hide me, For he grasps me now by the hair!" The loud Ocean heard, To its blue depth stirred, And divided at her prayer; Under the bowers Where the Ocean Powers Sit on their pearlèd thrones, Through the coral woods Of the weltering floods, Over heaps of unvalued stones; Through the dim beams Which amid the streams Weave a network of coloured light; And under the caves, Where the shadowy waves Are as green as the forest's night :Outspeeding the shark, And the sword-fish dark, And up through the rifts V And now from their fountains Down one vale where the morning basks, Like friends once parted Waken me when their Mother, the gray V stand at noon upon the peak of Heaven, Then with unwilling steps I wander down Into the clouds of the Atlantic even; For grief that I depart they weep and frown: Tells them that dreams and that the What look is more delightful than the moon is gone. blue dome, waves, smile With which I soothe them from the western isle? VI I walk over the mountains and the I am the eye with which the Universe Beholds itself and knows itself divine; |