They looked around, and lo! they became free!
Their many tyrants sitting desolately

In slave-deserted halls, could none restrain;

For wrath's red fire had withered in the eye, Whose lightning once was death,-nor fear, nor gain Could tempt one captive now to lock another's chain.

XI

3555

"Those who were sent to bind me, wept, and felt Their minds outsoar the bonds which clasped them round,

Even as a waxen shape may waste and melt

3561

In the white furnace; and a visioned swound,

3565

A pause of hope and awe the City bound, Which, like the silence of a tempest's birth, When in its awful shadow it has wound The sun, the wind, the ocean, and the earth,

IIung terrible, ere yet the lightnings have leaped forth.

XII

'Like clouds inwoven in the silent sky,

By winds from distant regions meeting there,

In the high name of truth and liberty,
Around the City millions gathered were,

Words which the lore of truth in hues of flame

Arrayed, thine own wild songs which in the air

By hopes which sprang from many a hidden lair,

3570

Like homeless odours floated, and the name

3575

Of thee, and many a tongue which thou hadst dipped in

flame.

XIII

"The Tyrant knew his power was gone, but Fear,
The nurse of Vengeance, bade him wait the event--
That perfidy and custom, gold and prayer,
And whatsoe'er, when force is impotent,

To fraud the sceptre of the world has lent,
Might, as he judged, confirm his failing sway.

Therefore throughout the streets, the Priests he sent To curse the rebels.-To their gods did they

3580

For Earthquake, Plague, and Want, kneel in the public way.

XIV

'And grave and hoary men were bribed to tell

From seats where law is made the slave of wrong,

3586

How glorious Athens in her splendour fell,
Because her sons were free, and that among
Mankind, the many to the few belong,

3590

By Heaven, and Nature, and Necessity.

They said, that age was truth, and that the young Marred with wild hopes the peace of slavery,

With which old times and men had quelled the vain and free. 3573 hues of grace ed. 1818.

XV

'And with the falsehood of their poisonous lips

3595

They breathed on the enduring memory

Of sages and of bards a brief eclipse ;
There was one teacher, who necessity

Had armed with strength and wrong against mankind,

His slave and his avenger aye to be;

That we were weak and sinful, frail and blind, And that the will of one was peace, and we

Should seek for nought on earth but toil and misery—

XVI

"For thus we might avoid the hell hereafter."

So spake the hypocrites, who cursed and lied; Alas, their sway was past, and tears and laughter Clung to their hoary hair, withering the pride Which in their hollow hearts dared still abide; And yet obscener slaves with smoother brow,

3600

3605

And sneers on their strait lips, thin, blue and wide, 3610 Said, that the rule of men was over now,

And hence, the subject world to woman's will must bow;

XVII

'And gold was scattered through the streets, and wine
Flowed at a hundred feasts within the wall.

In vain! the steady towers in Heaven did shine
As they were wont, nor at the priestly call
Left Plague her banquet in the Ethiop's hall,
Nor Famine from the rich man's portal came,
Where at her ease she ever preys on all

3615

Who throng to kneel for food nor fear nor shame, 3620 Nor faith, nor discord, dimmed hope's newly kindled flame.

XVIII

'For gold was as a god whose faith began

To fade, so that its worshippers were few,

And Faith itself, which in the heart of man

Gives shape, voice, name, to spectral Terror, knew 3625
Its downfall, as the altars lonelier grew,

Till the Priests stood alone within the fane;
The shafts of falsehood unpolluting flew,
And the cold sneers of calumny were vain,

The union of the free with discord's brand to stain.

XIX

"The rest thou knowest.-Lo! we two are here-
We have survived a ruin wide and deep-
Strange thoughts are mine. I cannot grieve or fear,
Sitting with thee upon this lonely steep

3630

I smile, though human love should make me weep. 3635

We have survived a joy that knows no sorrow,
And I do feel a mighty calmness creep
Over my heart, which can no longer borrow

Its hues from chance or change, dark children of to-morrow.

XX

'We know not what will come-yet_Laon, dearest, 3640 Cythna shall be the prophetess of Love,

Her lips shall rob thee of the grace thou wearest,

To hide thy heart, and clothe the shapes which rove
Within the homeless Future's wintry grove;

3645

Which rolls from steadfast truth, an unreturning stream.

XXI

For I now, sitting thus beside thee, seem

Even with thy breath and blood to live and move,

And violence and wrong are as a dream

'The blasts of Autumn drive the winged seeds
Over the earth,-next come the snows, and rain,
And frosts, and storms, which dreary Winter leads
Out of his Scythian cave, a savage train;
Behold! Spring sweeps over the world again,
Shedding soft dews from her ethereal wings;

3650

Flowers on the mountains, fruits over the plain,
And music on the waves and woods she flings,
And love on all that lives, and calm on lifeless things.

3655

XXII

'O Spring, of hope, and love, and youth, and gladness Wind-winged emblem! brightest, best and fairest ! Whence comest thou, when, with dark Winter's sadness 3660 The tears that fade in sunny smiles thou sharest? Sister of joy, thou art the child who wearest

Thy mother's dying smile, tender and sweet;

Thy mother Autumn, for whose grave thou bearest Fresh flowers, and beams like flowers, with gentle feet, 3665 Disturbing not the leaves which are her winding-sheet.

XXIII

'Virtue, and Hope, and Love, like light and Heaven, Surround the world.-We are their chosen slaves.

Has not the whirlwind of our spirit driven

Truth's deathless germs to thought's remotest caves? 3670 Lo, Winter comes!--the grief of many graves, The frost of death, the tempest of the sword,

The flood of tyranny, whose sanguine waves Stagnate like ice at Faith the enchanter's word, And bind all human hearts in its repose abhorred.

XXIV

"The seeds are sleeping in the soil: meanwhile The Tyrant peoples dungeons with his prey, Pale victims on the guarded scaffold smile

3675

Because they cannot speak; and, day by day,
The moon of wasting Science wanes away
Among her stars, and in that darkness vast
The sons of earth to their foul idols pray,
And gray Priests triumph, and like blight or blast
A shade of selfish care o'er human looks is cast.

XXV

'This is the winter of the world;-and here We die, even as the winds of Autumn fade,

Expiring in the frore and foggy air.

3680

3685

Behold! Spring comes, though we must pass, who made
The promise of its birth,-even as the shade

Which from our death, as from a mountain, flings

The future, a broad sunrise; thus arrayed

As with the plumes of overshadowing wings,

3690

From its dark gulf of chains, Earth like an eagle springs.

XXVI

'O dearest love! we shall be dead and cold
Before this morn may on the world arise;
Wouldst thou the glory of its dawn behold?
Alas! gaze not on me, but turn thine eyes
On thine own heart-it is a paradise
Which everlasting Spring has made its own,

And while drear Winter fills the naked skies,

3695

3700

Sweet streams of sunny thought, and flowers fresh-blown, Are there, and weave their sounds and odours into one.

XXVII

'In their own hearts the earnest of the hope
Which made them great, the good will ever find;
And though some envious shades may interlope
Between the effect and it, One comes behind,
Who aye the future to the past will bind-
Necessity, whose sightless strength for ever
Evil with evil, good with good must wind

In bands of union, which no power may sever:

3705

3710

They must bring forth their kind, and be divided never!

XXVIII

"The good and mighty of departed ages

Are in their graves, the innocent and free,

Heroes, and Poets, and prevailing Sages,

Who leave the vesture of their majesty

3715

To adorn and clothe this naked world;-and we

Are like to them-such perish, but they leave
All hope, or love, or truth, or liberty,

Whose forms their mighty spirits could conceive,

To be a rule and law to ages that survive.

3720

XXIX

'So be the turf heaped over our remains

Even in our happy youth, and that strange lot,
Whate'er it be, when in these mingling veins

The blood is still, be ours; let sense and thought
Pass from our being, or be numbered not
Among the things that are; let those who come
Behind, for whom our steadfast will has bought
A calm inheritance, a glorious doom,

Insult with careless tread, our undivided tomb.

XXX

'Our many thoughts and deeds, our life and love,
Our happiness, and all that we have been,
Immortally must live, and burn and move,

When we shall be no more;-the world has seen
A type of peace; and-as some most serene
And lovely spot to a poor maniac's eye,

After long years, some sweet and moving scene
Of youthful hope, returning suddenly,

3725

3730

3735

Quells his long madness-thus man shall remember thee.

-XXXI

'And Calumny meanwhile shall feed on us,

As worms devour the dead, and near the throne And at the altar, most accepted thus

3740

Shall sneers and curses be;-what we have done
None shall dare vouch, though it be truly known;
That record shall remain, when they must pass
Who built their pride on its oblivion;
And fame, in human hope which sculptured was,
Survive the perished scrolls of unenduring brass.

XXXII

'The while we two, beloved, must depart,

And Sense and Reason, those enchanters fair,

3745

Whose wand of power is hope, would bid the heart 3750 That gazed beyond the wormy grave despair:

These eyes, these lips, this blood, seems darkly there

To fade in hideous ruin; no calm sleep

Peopling with golden dreams the stagnant air,
Seems our obscure and rotting eyes to steep
In joy;-but senseless death-a ruin dark and deep!

XXXIII

'These are blind fancies -reason cannot know

What sense can neither feel, nor thought conceive; There is delusion in the world-and woe,

3755

And fear, and pain-we know not whence we live, 3760
Or why, or how, or what mute Power may give