ODE. I. OH Venice! Venice! when thy marble walls A loud lament along the sweeping sea! In contrast with their fathers-as the slime, 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 10 No mellower harvest! Thirteen hundred years And the harsh sound of the barbarian drum, 20 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 30* 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 Hope is nothing but a false delay, The sick man's lightning half an hour ere death, 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;- 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. 50 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, Are of as high an order-they must go 60 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. And deem this proof of loyalty the real ; 70 Save the few spirits, who, despite of all, 80 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, The cup which brings oblivion of a chain --: Heavy and sore,—in which long yoked they plough'd With a few summers, and again put forth Cities and generations-fair, when free 91 For, Tyranny, there blooms no bud for thee! . 100 |