Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like wither d leaves, to quicken a new birth ! And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! 0, wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

AN ODE,

writteN, octobert, 1819, before the spani ARds HAD RECoven Ed Thel R LIBERTY.

Anise, arise, arise! There is blood on the earth that denies ye bread; Be your wounds like eyes To weep for the dead, the dead, the dead. What other grief were it just to pay? Your sons, your wives, your brethren, were they; Who said they were slain on the battle day?

Awaken, awaken, awaken! The slave and the tyrant are twin-born foes; Be the cold chains shaken To the dust where your kindred repose, repose: Their bones in the grave will start and move, when they hear the voices of those they love, Most loud in the holy combat above.

Wave, wave high the banner! When freedom is riding to conquest by: Though the slaves that fan her Be famine and toil, giving sigh for sigh. And ye who attend her imperial car, Lift not your hands in the banded war, But in her defence whose children ye are.

Glory, glory, glory, To those who have greatly suffer'd and done! Never name in story was greater than that which ye shall have won. Conquerors have conquer'd their foes alone,

Whose revenge, pride, and power they have overthrown:

Ride ye, more victorious, over your own.

Bind, bind every brow With crownals of violet, ivy, and pine: Hide the blood-stains now With hues which sweet nature has made divine: Green strength, azure hope, and eternity: But let not the pansy among them be; Ye were injured, and that neans memory.

Ode to LIBERTY.

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

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, Gleam'd. My soul spurn'd the chains of its dismay, 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 accustom'd 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 hurra Into the depths of heaven. The daedal 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 Groan'd, for beasts warr'd 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 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

iW. The nodding promontories, and bluc isles, And cloud-like mountains, and dividuous waves Of Greece, bask'd glorious in the open smiles Of favouring heaven: from their enchanted cave

W. 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 Within its cloudy wings with sun-fire garlanded, A divine work! Athens diviner yet Gleam'd with its crest of columns, on the will Of man, as on a mount of diamond, set; For thou wert, and thine all-creative skill Peopled with forms that mock the eternal dead In marble immortality, that hill Which was thine earliest throne and latest oracle.

Wi. 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; Religion veils her eyes; Oppression shrinks 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 renew.

Wii. Then Rome was, and from thy deep bosom fairest, Like a wolf-cub from a Cadmaean Maenad, 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 sanctified; 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 prophaned thy capitolian throne, Thou didst desert, with spirit-winged lightness, The senate of the tyrants: they sunk prone Slavcs of one tyrant: Palatinus sigh'd Faint echoes of Ionian song; that tone Thou didst delay to hear, lamenting to disown.

* See the Baccline of Euripides.

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 unlearn? 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, The Galilean serpent forth did creep, And made thy world an undistinguishable heape

ix. A thousand years the Earth cried, Where art thout 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 sunlike shafts pierce tempest-winged Error, As light may pierce the clouds when they dissever 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 slow 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, iAnd 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. Thou heaven of earth! what spells could pall thee then, 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. 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 AEtna, and the cold Snow-crags by its reply are cloven in sunder: O'er the lit waves every Eolian isle From Pithecusa to Pelorus Howls, and leaps, and glares in chorus: They cry, Bedim, ye lamps of heaven suspended o'er us. Iler 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 wilderness! Thou island of eternity! thou shrine Where desolation, clothed with loveliness, Worships the thing thou wert, o Italy, Gather thy blood into thy heart; repress 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, And cut the snaky knots of this foul gordian word, 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, "t is 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 din world, That the pale name of Palest 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 0, 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.

xWii. 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.

wVIII. 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 0, 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

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 aerial golden light
On the-heavy sounding plain,
When the bolt has pierced its brain;
As summer clouds dissolve, unburthen'd of their rain;
As a far taper fades with fading night,
As a brief insect dies with dying day,
My song, its pinions disarray'd of might,
Droop'd; o'er it closed the echoes far away
Of the great voice which did its flight sustain,
As waves which lately paved his watery way

Hiss round a drowner's head in their tempestuous play.

ODE TO NAPLES." Epode i. 2.

I stood within the city disinterr'd; *
And heard the autumnal leaves like light footfalls
Of spirits passing through the strects; 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 wreathes 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 ii. 2.

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

"The Author has connected many recollections of his visit to Pompeii and Baiae with the enthusiasm excited by the intelligence of the proclamation of a Constitutional 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 Nute.

* Tom, eii.

st Rophe Cz. I. Naples! 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 didst cease to be, Now art, and henceforth ever shalt 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

Leap'st, clothed in armour of impenetrable scale!
Last, of the Intercessors! -
Who 'gainst the Crown'd Transgressors

Pleadest before God's love! Array'd in Wisdom'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

ANTiSTftophe ox. What though Cimmerian Anarchs dare blaspheme Freedom and thee! thy shield 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! Be thou like the imperial Basilisk, Killing thy foe with unapparent wounds! Gaze on oppression, till at that dread risk Aghast she pass from the Earth's disk: Fear not, but gaze—for freemen mightier grow, And slaves more feeble, gazing on their foe. If Hope and Truth and Justice may avail, Thou shalt be great.—All hail!

ANTIstrophe 3. 2.

Froin Freedom's form divine, Fro::1 Nature's in most shrine,

Epode 11, 3. Great Spirit, deepest Love! Which rulest and dost move All things which live and are, within the Italian shore; Who spreadest heaven around it, Whose woods, rocks, waves, surround it; Who sittest in thy star, o'er Ocean's western floor, Spirit of beauty at whose soft command The sunbeams and the showers distil its foison o From the Earth's bosom chill; O bid those beams be each a blinding brand Of lightning! bid those showers be dews of poison: Bid the Earth's plenty kill! Bid thy bright Heaven above, Whilst light and darkness bound it, Be their tomb who plann'd To make it ours and thine! Or, with thine harmonizing ardours fill And raise thy sons, as o'er the prone horizon Thy lamp feeds every twilight wave with fire— Be man's high hope and unextinct desire The instrument to work thy will divine! Then clouds from sunbeams, antelopes from leoparis, And frowns and fears from Thee, would not more swiftly flee Than Celtic wolves from the Ausonian shepherds — Whatever, Spirit, from thy starry shrine Thou yieldest or withholdest, Oh let be This city of thy worship ever free! September, 1820.

the CLOUI).

I baing fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams:
I bear light shades for the leaves when laid
In their noon-day dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rock'd to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing bail,
And whiten the green plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.

o I sift the snow on the mountains below, And their great pines groan aghast; And all the night 'tis my pillow white, While I sleep in the arms of the blast. Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers, Lightning my pilot sits, In a cavern under is fetter'd the thunder, It struggles and howls at fits; Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion, This pilot is guiding me, Lured by the love of the genii that move In the depths of the purple sea; Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills, Over the lakes and the plains, Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream, The Spirit he loves remains; And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile, Whilst he is dissolving in rains.