The Dying Gladiator.
I see before me the Gladiator lie:
He leans upon his hand—his manly brow Consents to death, but conquers agony, And his drooped head sinks gradually low- And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow From the red gash fall heavy, one by one, Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now The arena swims around him-he is gone,
Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won.
He heard it, but he heeded not-his eyes
Were with his heart, and that was far away: He recked not of the life he lost nor prize, But where his rude hut by the Danube lay; There were his young barbarians all at play, There was their Dacian mother-he, their sire, Butchered to make a Roman holiday;
All this rushed with his blood. Shall he expire, And unaveng'd? Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire! Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean-roll! Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain ; Man marks the earth with ruin-his control Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain Thy wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain A shadow of man's ravage, save his own, When, for a moment, like a drop of rain, He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown. Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee- Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters washed them power while they were free, And many a tyrant since; their shores obey The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay Has dried up realms to deserts :-not so thou ;— Unchangeable, save to thy wild waves' play. Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow; Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.
Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,—
Calm or convulsed, in breeze or gale or storm, Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
Dark heaving-boundless, endless, and sublime, The image of eternity; the throne
Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are made; each zone Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.
And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy I wantoned with thy breakers-they to me Were a delight; and if the freshening sea Made them a terror-'twas a pleasing fear, For I was as it were a child of thee,
And trusted to thy billows far and near, And laid my hand upon thy mane—as I do here.
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto iv.
How gloriously her gallant course she goes! Her white wings flying-never from her foes: She walks the waters like a thing of life, And seems to dare the elements to strife. Who would not brave the battle-fire, the wreck, To move the monarch of her peopled deck? The Corsair.
The stars are forth, the moon above the tops Of the snow-shining mountains. Beautiful! I linger yet with Nature, for the Night Hath been to me a more familiar face Than that of man; and in her starry shade
Of dim and solitary loveliness,
I learned the language of another world.
I do remember me, that in my youth, When I was wandering-upon such a night I stood within the Coliseum's wall, 'Midst the chief relics of almighty Rome; And thou didst shine, thou rolling moon, upon All this, and cast a wide and tender light, Which softened down the hoar austerity Of rugged desolation, and filled up, As 'twere anew, the gaps of centuries; Leaving that beautiful which still was so, And making that which was not, till the place Became religion, and the heart ran o'er
With silent worship of the great of old,
The dead, but sceptered sovereigns, who still rule Our spirits from their urns.
Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime? Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle, Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime! Know ye the land of the cedar and vine,
Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine; Where the light wings of Zephyr, oppressed with perfume, Wax faint o'er the gardens of Gúla in her bloom; Where the citron and olive are fairest of fruit,
And the voice of the nightingale never is mute:
Where the tints of the earth, and the hues of the sky,
In colour though varied, in beauty may vie,
And the purple of ocean is deepest in dye;
Where the virgins are soft as the roses they twine,
And all, save the spirit of man, is divine?
"Tis the clime of the East; 'tis the land of the Sun
Can he smile on such deeds as his children have done?
Oh! wild as the accents of lovers' farewell
Are the hearts which they bear, and the tales which they tell. The Bride of Abydos.
Hereditary bondsmen! Know ye not,
Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow? Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, cant. ii. st. 76.
Sapping a solemn creed with solemn sneer.
The dome of thought, the palace of the soul.
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
The Dream, st. 3.
The Astrologer.
The light of love, the purity of grace, The mind, the music breathing from her face, The heart, whose softness harmonised the whole, And oh that eye was in itself a soul.
The Bride of Abydos, cant. i. st. 6.
Marino Faliero, act ii. sc. 2
"Tis pleasant sure to see one's name in print; A book's a book—although there's nothing in't.
Ye stars which are the poetry of heaven,
A beauty and a mystery, and create
In us such love and reverence from afar,
That fortune-fame-power-life-have named themselves a star.
233. Rev. Charles Wolfe, 1791-1823. (Handbook, par. 235.)
The Burial of Sir John Moore.
Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, As his corse to the rampart we hurried; Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot O'er the grave where our hero we buried.
We buried him darkly at dead of night, The sod with our bayonets turning- By the struggling moonbeam's misty light, And the lantern dimly burning.
No useless coffin enclosed his breast,
Not in sheet nor in shroud we wound him; But he lay like a warrior taking his rest,
With his martial cloak around him. Few and short were the prayers we said, And we spoke not a word of sorrow; But we steadfastly gazed on the face of the dead, And we bitterly thought of the morrow.
We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed, And smoothed down his lonely pillow,
That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head, And we far away on the billow!
Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone, And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him— But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on In the grave where a Briton has laid him.
But half of our heavy task was done
When the clock struck the hour for retiring; And we heard the distant and random gun That the foe was sullenly firing.
Slowly and sadly we laid him down,
From the field of his fame fresh and gory;
We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone- But we left him alone with his glory.
234. Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822. (Handbook, pars. 1c6, 228.)
To a Skylark.
Hail to thee, blithe spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
Higher still, and higher,
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever, singest.
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