Which, if it waned and dwindled, Earth may
The city it has clothed in chains, which clank Now, creaking in the ears of those who owe The name of Freedom to her glorious struggles; Yet she but shares with them a common woe, And call'd the "kingdom " of a conquering foe, But knows what all-and, most of all, we know— With what set gilded terms a tyrant juggles!
The name of Commonwealth is past and gone
O'er the three fractions of the groaning globe;
Venice is crush'd, and Holland deigns to own
A sceptre, and endures the purple robe;
If the free Switzer yet bestrides alone
His chainless mountains, 'tis but for a time,
For tyranny of late is cunning grown,
And in its own good season tramples down
The sparkles of our ashes. One great clime,
Whose vigorous offspring by dividing ocean
Are kept apart and nursed in the devotion
Of Freedom, which their fathers fought for, and
Bequeath'd-a heritage of heart and hand,
And proud distinction from each other land,
Whose sons must bow them at a monarch's
motion,
As if his senseless sceptre were a wand
Full of the magic of exploded science-
Still one great clime, in full and free defiance.
Yet rears her crest, unconquer'd and sublime,
Above the far Atlantic!-She has taught
Her Esau-brethren that the haughty flag,
The floating fence of Albion's feebler crag,
May strike to those whose red right hands have bought
Rights cheaply earn'd with blood. Still, still, for ever,
Better, though each man's life-blood were a river,
That it should flow, and overflow, than creep
Through thousand lazy channels in our veins,
Damm'd like the dull canal with locks and chains,
And moving, as a sick man in his sleep,
Three paces, and then faltering: better be
Where the extinguish'd Spartans still are free,
In their proud charnel of Thermopylæ,
Than stagnate in our marsh,-or o'er the deep
Fly, and one current to the ocean add,
One spirit to the souls our fathers had,
One freeman more, America, to thee!
Introduction to the Morgante
Maggiore.
AMONG the weaknesses of great authors for literary
bantlings to which the public is totally indifferent may
be mentioned Lord Byron's affection for this translation
from the Italian, one of the best things he considered
that he ever wrote. Such was the care he bestowed on
it, that the poem only progressed at the rate of two
stanzas an evening, Byron's usual time for composition.
Neither his publisher, however, nor his literary friends
in England, could see that it would have any attractions
for the English public, and the translation first appeared
in the "Liberal," the paper of Leigh Hunt and his
brother which Lord Byron supported both by his purse
and pen.
We fear that most readers will be inclined to
parody Douglas Jerrold on an occasion when he was
called upon to compliment a performance on account
of its extreme difficulty, and to wish that it had been im-
possible. Pulci is an author very little known out of
Italy, and the fact of his being rendered into English
dress by Lord Byron is a mere matter of literary
curiosity, but cannot invest his verses with any interest
for English readers. It is difficult to make out whether
the author is making game of persons who are objects
of reverence to the majority of Christians, or whether
we must look on the performance in the same light as
the grotesque figures on some old churches, or as the
miracle plays which shew how great a gap there is be-
tween the public taste of the middle ages and that of
the nineteenth century. Lord Byron was asked to
assent to the suppression of some of the stanzas, but
his answer was that the impiety, if there were any,
reflected only on Pulci.
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