But an empty vaunt—

A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden

want.

XV.

What objects are the fountains

Of thy happy strain?

What fields, or waves, or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain?

What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

XVI.

With thy clear keen joyance

Languor cannot be :

Shadow of annoyance

Never came near thee:

Thou lovest; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

XVII.

Waking or asleep,

Thou of death must deem

Things more true and deep

Than we mortals dream,

Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

XVIII.

We look before and after,

And pine for what is not:

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught; [thought.

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest

XIX.

Yet if we could scorn

Hate, and pride, and fear;
If we were things born

Not to shed a tear,

I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

XX.

Better than all measures

Of delightful sound,

Better than all treasures

That in books are found,

Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

XXI.

Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness

From my lips would flow,

The world should listen then, as I am listening

now.

ΤΟ

I FEAR thy kisses, gentle maiden,
Thou needest not fear mine;

My spirit is too deeply laden
Ever to burthen thine.

I fear thy mien, thy tones, thy motion,

Thou needest not fear mine;
Innocent is the heart's devotion
With which I worship thine.

ODE TO LIBERTY.

Yet freedom, yet, thy banner torn but flying,
Streams like a thunder-storm against the wind.

BYRON.

I.

A GLORIOUS people vibrated again

The lightning of the nations: Liberty,

From heart to heart, from tower to tower, o'er Spain,

Scattering contagious fire into the sky,

Gleamed. My soul spurned the chains of its dis

may,

And, in the rapid plumes of song,

Clothed itself sublime and strong;

As a young eagle soars the morning clouds among, Hovering in verse o'er its accustomed prey;

Till from its station in the heaven of fame The Spirit's whirlwind rapt it, and the ray Of the remotest sphere of living flame Which paves the void, was from behind it flung, As foam from a ship's swiftness, when there

came

A voice out of the deep; I will record the same.

II.

The Sun and the serenest Moon sprang forth;
The burning stars of the abyss were hurl'd
Into the depths of heaven. The dædal earth,
That island in the ocean of the world,
Hung in its cloud of all-sustaining air:
But this divinest universe

Was yet a chaos and a curse,

For thou wert not: but power from worst producing worse,

The spirit of the beasts was kindled there,

And of the birds, and of the watery forms, And there was war among them and despair Within them, raging without truce or terms: The bosom of their violated nurse

Groaned, for beasts warred on beasts, and worms on worms,

And men on men; each heart was as a hell of

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 mil-
lion,

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 astonished herds of men from every side.

IV.

The nodding promontories, and blue isles,

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

On the unapprchensive 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 veiled by many a

vein

Of Parian stone; and yet a speechless child,
Verse murmured, 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