YE distant spires, ye antique tow'rs,
That crown the wat❜ry glade,

Where grateful Science still adores
Her Henry's holy shade;

And ye, that from the stately brow

Of Windsor's heights th' expanse below

Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey,

Whose turf, whose shade, whose flow'rs among
Wanders the hoary Thames along
His silver-winding way;

Ah happy hills, ah pleasing shade,
Ah fields beloved in vain,

Where once my careless childhood strayed,
A stranger yet to pain!

I feel the gales that from ye blow
A momentary bliss bestow,

As waving fresh their gladsome wing,
My weary soul they seem to soothe,
And, redolent of joy and youth,
To breathe a second spring.

Say, Father Thames, for thou hast seen
Full many a sprightly race,
Disporting on thy margent green

The paths of pleasure trace;
Who foremost now delight to cleave
With pliant arm thy glassy wave?
The captive linnet which enthral?
What idle progeny succeed

To chase the rolling circle's speed,
Or urge the flying ball?

[While some on earnest business bent

Their murmuring labours ply

'Gainst graver hours, that bring constraint To sweeten liberty;

Some bold adventurers disdain

The limits of their little reign,

And unknown regions dare descry:

Still as they run they look behind, They hear a voice in ev'ry wind, And snatch a fearful joy.]

Gay hope is theirs, by fancy fed,

Less pleasing when possessed; The tear forgot as soon as shed,

The sunshine of the breast: Theirs buxom health of rosy hue, Wild wit, invention ever new, And lively cheer, of vigour born;

The thoughtless day, the easy night,
The spirits pure, the slumbers light
That fly th' approach of morn.

Alas! regardless of their doom
The little victims play!
No sense have they of ills to come,
Nor care beyond to-day:
Yet see, how all around them wait
The ministers of human fate,
And black Misfortune's baleful train!

Ah, show them where in ambush stand, To seize their prey, the murd'rous band! Ah, tell them they are men!

These shall the fury Passions tear,
The vultures of the mind,
Disdainful Anger, pallid Fear,

And Shame that skulks behind;
Or pining Love shall waste their youth,
Or Jealousy with rankling tooth,
That inly gnaws the secret heart,
And Envy wan, and faded Care,
Grim-visaged comfortless Despair,
And Sorrow's piercing dart.

To each his sufferings: all are men,
Condemned alike to groan;
The tender for another's pain,

Th' unfeeling for his own.

Yet, ah! why should they know their fate? Since sorrow never comes too late,

And happiness too swiftly flies.

Thought would destroy their paradise. No more; where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise.

On a rock, whose haughty brow

Frowns o'er old Conway's foaming flood, Robed in the sable garb of woe,

With haggard eyes the Poet stood; (Loose his beard and hoary hair Streamed, like a meteor, to the troubled air;) And with a master's hand, and prophet's fire, Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre. 'Hark, how each giant oak and desert cave

Sighs to the torrent's awful voice beneath! O'er thee, O king! their hundred arms they wave,

Revenge on thee in hoarser murmurs breathe; Vocal no more, since Cambria's fatal day, To high-born Hoel's harp, or soft Llewellyn's lay.

'Cold is Cadwallo's tongue,

That hushed the stormy main:

Brave Urien sleeps upon his craggy bed:
Mountains, ye mourn in vain
Modred, whose magic song

Made huge Plinlimmon bow his cloud-topped head.

[On dreary Arvon's shore they lie,

Smeared with gore, and ghastly pale:

Far, far aloof th' affrighted ravens sail; The famished eagle screams, and passes by. Dear lost companions of my tuneful art,

Dear, as the light that visits these sad eyes, Dear, as the ruddy drops that warm my heart, Ye died amidst your dying country's cries-] No more I weep. They do not sleep.

On yonder cliffs, a grisly band,

I see them sit: they linger yet,

Avengers of their native land:

With me in dreadful harmony they join, And weave with bloody hands the tissue of thy line.

"Weave the warp, and weave the woof, The winding sheet of Edward's race: Give ample room, and verge enough

The characters of hell to trace. Mark the year, and mark the night, When Severn shall re-echo with affright The shrieks of death, through Berkley's roofs that ring,

Shrieks of an agonising king!

[She-wolf of France, with unrelenting fangs,

That tear'st the bowels of thy mangled mate, From thee be born, who o'er thy country hangs The scourge of Heaven! What terrors

round him wait!

Amazement in his van, with Flight combined, And Sorrow's faded form, and Solitude behind.]

"Mighty victor, mighty lord,

Low on his funeral couch he lies! No pitying heart, no eye, afford

A tear to grace his obsequies.

Is the sable warrior fled?

Thy son is gone. He rests among the dead.

The swarm that in thy noon-tide beam were born?

Gone to salute the rising morn.

Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr

blows,

While proudly riding o'er the azure realm In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes;

Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm ;

Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind's sway, That, hushed in grim repose, expects his evening prey.

["Fill high the sparkling bowl,

The rich repast prepare;

Reft of a crown, he yet may share the feast: Close by the regal chair

Fell Thirst and Famine scowl

A baleful smile upon their baffled guest.]
Heard ye the din of battle bray,

Lance to lance, and horse to horse?

Long years of havock urge their destined

(The web is wove. The work is done.") 'Stay, oh stay! nor thus forlorn

Leave me unblest, unpitied, here to mourn:

In yon bright track, that fires the western

skies,

They melt, they vanish from my eyes.

But O! what solemn scenes on Snowdon's height Descending slow their glittering skirts unroll? Visions of glory, spare my aching sight!

Ye unborn ages, crowd not on my soul ! No more our long-lost Arthur we bewail. All-hail, ye genuine kings, Britannia's issue, hail! ['Girt with many a baron bold

Sublime their starry fronts they rear; And gorgeous dames, and statesmen old In bearded majesty, appear.

In the midst a form divine!

Her eye proclaims her of the Briton line;
Her lion-port, her awe-commanding face,
Attempered sweet to virgin grace.

What strings symphonious tremble in the air! What strains of vocal transport round her play!

Hear from the grave, great Taliessin, hear;

They breathe a soul to animate thy clay. Bright Rapture calls, and soaring, as she sings. Waves in the eye of Heaven her many-coloured wings.

'The verse adorn again

Fierce War, and faithful Love,

And Truth severe, by fairy Fiction dressed.
In buskined measures move
Pale Grief, and pleasing Pain,
With Horror, tyrant of the throbbing breast.
A voice, as of the cherub-choir,
Gales from blooming Eden bear;

And distant warblings lessen on my ear,
That lost in long futurity expire.

Fond impious man! think'st thou yon sanguine cloud,

Raised by thy breath, has quenched the orb of day?

To-morrow he repairs the golden flood,

And warms the nations with redoubled ray.] Enough for me: with joy I see

The different doom our fates assign.

Be thine Despair, and sceptred Care;
To triumph, and to die, are mine.'

He spoke; and, headlong from the mountain's

height

Deep in the roaring tide he plunged to endless night.

ODE TO ADVERSITY

AT midnight, in his guarded tent,

The Turk was dreaming of the hour When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent, Should tremble at his power.

In dreams, through camp and court, he bore The trophies of a conqueror;

In dreams his song of triumph heard; Then wore his monarch's signet-ring, Then pressed that monarch's throne--a king; As wild his thoughts, and gay of wing, As Eden's garden bird.

At midnight, in the forest shades,

Bozzaris ranged his Suliote band-
True as the steel of their tried blades,
Heroes in heart and hand.

There had the Persian's thousands stood,
There had the glad earth drunk their blood
On old Platea's day;

And now there breathed that haunted air
The sons of sires who conquered there,
With arm to strike, and soul to dare,
As quick, as far, as they.

An hour passed on,-the Turk awoke:
That bright dream was his last;
He woke to hear his sentries shriek,

"To arms! they come! the Greek! the Greek!'
He woke to die 'midst flame, and smoke,
And shout, and groan, and sabre-stroke,

And death-shots falling thick and fast As lightnings from the mountain-cloud; And heard, with voice as trumpet loud,

Bozzaris cheer his band:

'Strike-till the last armed foe expires;
Strike-for your altars and your fires;
Strike-for the green graves of your sires
God-and your native land!"

They fought-like brave men, long and well;
They piled that ground with Moslem slain;
They conquered;-but Bozzaris fell,
Bleeding at every vein.

His few surviving comrades saw
His smile when rang their proud hurrah,
And the red field was won;

Then saw in death his eyelids close
Calmly, as to a night's repose,
Like flowers at set of sun.

[Come to the bridal chamber, Death!
Come to the mother's, when she feels,
For the first time, her first-born's breath;
Come, when the blessed seals
That close the pestilence are broke,
And crowded cities wail its stroke;
Come in consumption's ghastly form,
The earthquake shock, the ocean storm;
Come, when the heart beats high and warm,
With banquet-song, and dance, and wine;-
And thou art terrible,-the tear,

The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier;
And all we know, or dream, or fear
Of agony, are thine.

But to the hero, when his sword

Has won the battle for the free,
Thy voice sounds like a prophet's word;
And in its hollow tones are heard

The thanks of millions yet to be.
Come, when his task of fame is wrought,—
Come with her laurel-leaf, blood-bought,-
Come in her crowning hour,-and then
Thy sunken eyes' unearthly light
To him is welcome as the sight

Of sky and stars to prisoned men; Thy grasp is welcome as the hand Of brother in a foreign land; Thy summons welcome as the cry That told the Indian isles were nigh To the world-seeking Genoese, When the land-wind, from woods of palm, And orange-groves, and fields of balm, Blew o'er the Haytian seas.]

Bozzaris! with the storied brave

Greece nurtured in her glory's time, Rest thee!-there is no prouder grave, Even in her own proud clime. She wore no funeral weeds for thee, Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume, Like torn branch from death's leafless tree, In sorrow's pomp and pageantry,

The heartless luxury of the tomb. But she remembers thee as one Long loved, and for a season gone; For thee her poet's lyre is wreathed,

Her marble wrought, her music breathed;

For thee she rings the birthday bells; Of thee her babes' first lisping tells; For thine her evening prayer is said At palace couch, and cottage bed; Her soldier, closing with the foe, Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow; His plighted maiden, when she fears 100 For him, the joy of her young years, Thinks of thy fate, and checks her tears. And she, the mother of thy boys,

Though in her eye and faded cheek
Is read the grief she will not speak,

The memory of her buried joys,—
And even she who gave thee birth,—
Will, by their pilgrim-circled hearth,

Talk of thy doom without a sigh: For thou art Freedom's now, and Fame's,— One of the few, the immortal names That were not born to die.

I READ last night of the Grand Review
In Washington's chiefest avenue,—
Two Hundred Thousand men in blue,

I think they said was the number,— Till I seemed to hear their trampling feet, The bugle-blast and the drum's quick beat, The clatter of hoofs in the stony street, The cheers of people who came to greet, And the thousand details that to repeat Would only my verse encumber,— Till I fell in a reverie, sad and sweet,

And then to a fitful slumber.

When, lo! in a vision I seemed to stand
In the lonely Capitol. On each hand
Far stretched the portico; dim and grand
Its columns ranged, like a martial band
Of sheeted spectres whom some command
Had called to a last reviewing.

And the streets of the city were white and

bare;

No footfall echoed across the square;
But out of the misty midnight air

I heard in the distance a trumpet blare,
And the wandering night-winds seemed to

bear

The sound of a far tattooing.

Then I held my breath with fear and dread;

For into the square, with a brazen tread,
There rode a figure whose stately head

O'erlooked the review that morning,
That never bowed from its firm-set seat
When the living column passed its feet,
Yet now rode steadily up the street

To the phantom bugle's warning:

Till it reached the Capitol square, and wheeled,
And there in the moonlight stood revealed
A well-known form that in State and field
Had led our patriot sires;

Whose face was turned to the sleeping camp,
Afar through the river's fog and damp,
That showed no flicker, nor waning lamp,
Nor wasted bivouac fires.

And I saw a phantom army come,
With never a sound of fife or drum,
But keeping time to a throbbing hum
Of wailing and lamentation:
The martyred heroes of Malvern Hill,
Of Gettysburg and Chancellorsville,
The men whose wasted figures fill

The patriot graves of the nation.

And there came the nameless dead,-the men
Who perished in fever-swamp and fen,
The slowly-starved of the prison-pen.

And, marching beside the others,
Came the dusky martyrs of Pillow's fight,
With limbs enfranchised and bearing bright:
I thought-perhaps 'twas the pale moonlight-
They looked as white as their brothers!

And so all night marched the Nation's dead,
With never a banner above them spread,
Nor a badge, nor a motto brandished;
No mark-save the bare uncovered head
Of the silent bronze Reviewer;
With never an arch save the vaulted sky;
With never a flower save those that lie
On the distant graves-for love could buy
No gift that was purer or truer.

50

So all night long swept the strange array;
So all night long, till the morning grey,
I watched for one who had passed away,
With a reverent awe and wonder,-
Till a blue cap waved in the length'ning line, 70
And I knew that one who was kin of mine
Had come; and I spake-and lo! that sign
Awakened me from my slumber,