ODE.

I.

OH Venice! Venice! when thy marble walls
Are level with the waters, there shall be
A cry of nations o'er thy sunken halls,

A loud lament along the sweeping sea!
If I, a northern wanderer, weep for thee,
What should thy sons do?-any thing but weep:
And yet they only murmur in their sleep.

In contrast with their fathers-as the slime,
The dull green ooze of the receding deep,
Is with the dashing of the spring-tide foam,

That drives the sailor shipless to his home,

Are they to those that were; and thus they creep, Crouching and crab-like, through their sapping streets. Oh! agony-that centuries should reap

E

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No mellower harvest! Thirteen hundred years
Of wealth and glory turn'd to dust and tears;
And every monument the stranger meets,
Church, palace, pillar, as a mourner greets;
And even the Lion all subdued appears,

And the harsh sound of the barbarian drum,

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With dull and daily dissonance, repeats

The echo of thy tyrant's voice along

The soft waves, once all musical to song,

That heaved beneath the moonlight with the throng

Of gondolas and to the busy hum

Of cheerful creatures, whose most sinful deeds

Were but the overbeating of the heart,

And flow of too much happiness, which needs

The aid of age to turn its course apart
From the luxuriant and voluptuous flood

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Of sweet sensations, battling with the blood.

But these are better than the gloomy errors,

The weeds of nations in their last decay,

When Vice walks forth with her unsoften'd terrors,
And Mirth is madness, and but smiles to slay;

And Hope is nothing but a false delay,

The sick man's lightning half an hour ere death,
When Faintness, the last mortal birth of Pain,

And apathy of limb, the dull beginning

Of the cold staggering race which Death is winning, 40 Steals vein by vein and pulse by pulse away;

Yet so relieving the o'er-tortured clay,

To him appears renewal of his breath,

And freedom the mere numbness of his chain;-
And then he talks of life, and how again
He feels his spirits soaring-albeit weak,
And of the fresher air, which he would seek;
And as he whispers knows not that he gasps,
That his thin finger feels not what it clasps,
And so the film comes o'er him--and the dizzy
Chamber swims round and round-and shadows busy,

At which he vainly catches, flit and gleam,

Till the last rattle chokes the strangled scream,

And all is ice and blackness,-and the earth

That which it was the moment ere our birth.

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II.

There is no hope for nations!-Search the page

Of many thousand years-the daily scene,

The flow and ebb of each recurring age,

The everlasting to be which hath been,
Hath taught us nought or little: still we lean
On things that rot beneath our weight, and wear
Our strength away in wrestling with the air;
For 'tis our nature strikes us down: the beasts
Slaughter'd in hourly hecatombs for feasts

Are of as high an order-they must go

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Even where their driver goads them, though to slaughter. Ye men, who pour your blood for kings as water,

What have they given your children in return?

A heritage of servitude and woes,

A blindfold bondage, where your hire is blows.
What! do not yet the red-hot ploughshares burn,
O'er which you stumble in a false ordeal,

And deem this proof of loyalty the real ;
Kissing the hand that guides you to your scars,
And glorying as you tread the glowing bars?
All that your sires have left you, all that Time
Bequeaths of free, and History of sublime,
Spring from a different theme!-Ye see and read,
Admire and sigh, and then succumb and bleed !

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Save the few spirits, who, despite of all,

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And worse than all, the sudden crimes engender'd

By the down-thundering of the prison-wall,

And thirst to swallow the sweet waters tender'd,

Gushing from Freedom's fountains-when the crowd,
Madden'd with centuries of drought, are loud,
And trample on each other to obtain

The cup which brings oblivion of a chain

--:

Heavy and sore,—in which long yoked they plough'd
The sand,--or if there sprung the yellow grain,
'Twas not for them, their necks were too much bow'd,
And their dead palates chew'd the cud of pain:
Yes! the few spirits—who, despite of deeds
Which they abhor, confound not with the cause
Those momentary starts from Nature's laws,
Which, like the pestilence and earthquake, smite
But for a term, then pass, and leave the earth
With all her seasons to repair the blight

With a few summers, and again put forth

Cities and generations-fair, when free

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For, Tyranny, there blooms no bud for thee! . 100