CLITUMNUS.

(CHILDE HAROLD, Canto iv. Stanzas 66, 67.)

BUT thou, Clitumnus! in thy sweetest wave
Of the most living crystal that was e'er
The haunt of river nymph, to gaze and lave

Her limbs where nothing hid them, thou dost rear
Thy grassy banks whereon the milk-white steer
Grazes; the purest god of gentle waters!

And most serene of aspect, and most clear;
Surely that stream was unprofaned by slaughters-
A mirror and a bath for Beauty's youngest daughters!

And on thy happy shore a Temple still,
Of small and delicate proportion, keeps,
Upon a mild declivity of hill,

Its memory of thee; beneath it sweeps
Thy current's calmness; oft from out it leaps
The finny darter with the glittering scales,
Who dwells and revels in thy glassy deeps;
While, chance, some scatter'd water-lily sails

Down where the shallower wave still tells its bubbling tales.

TERNI.

(CHILDE HAROLD, Canto iv. Stanzas 69-72.)

THE roar of waters !—from the headlong height
Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice;

The fall of waters! rapid as the light

The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss;
The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss,
And boil in endless torture; while the sweat
Of their great agony, wrung out from this
Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet
That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set,

And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again
Returns in an unceasing shower, which round,
With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain,

Is an eternal April to the ground,

Making it all one emerald :-how profound

The gulf! and how the giant element

From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound,

Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful vent

To the broad column which rolls on, and shows
More like the fountain of an infant sea

Torn from the womb of mountains by the throes

Of a new world, than only thus to be
Parent of rivers, which flow gushingly,

With many windings, through the vale :-Look back!
Lo! where it comes like an eternity,

As if to sweep down all things in its track, Charming the eye with dread, a matchless cataract,

But all too late,—so are we doubly curst. Love, fame, ambition, avarice—'tis the same, Each idle—and all ill—and none the worst— For all are meteors with a different name, And Death the sable smoke where vanishes the flame.

SONNET ON CHILLON.

ETERNAL Spirit of the chainless Mind!
Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,
For there thy habitation is the heart—
The heart which love of thee alone can bind;
And when thy sons to fetters are consign'd—

To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom, Their country conquers with their martyrdom, And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind. Chillon thy prison is a holy place,

And thy sad floor an altar-for 'twas trod, Until his very steps have left a trace

Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod, By Bonnivard !—May none those marks efface! For they appeal from tyranny to God.

BONNIVARD AND HIS BROTHERS.

(PRISONER OF CHILLON, Stanzas 6-8.)

LAKE Leman lies by Chillon's walls :
A thousand feet in depth below
Its massy waters meet and flow;
Thus much the fathom-line was sent
From Chillon's snow-white battlement,
Which round about the wave inthrals:

A double dungeon wall and wave
Have made and like a living grave.
Below the surface of the lake
The dark vault lies wherein we lay,
We heard it ripple night and day;

Sounding o'er our heads it knock'd;
And I have felt the winter's spray

Wash through the bars when winds were high
And wanton in the happy sky;

And then the very rock hath rock'd,
And I have felt it shake, unshock'd,

Because I could have smiled to see

The death that would have set me free.

I said my nearer brother pined,

I said his mighty heart declined,
He loathed and put away his food;
It was not that 'twas coarse and rude,
For we were used to hunter's fare,
And for the like had little care:

The milk drawn from the mountain goat Was changed for water from the moat, Our bread was such as captive's tears Have moisten'd many a thousand years, Since man first pent his fellow men Like brutes within an iron den; But what were these to us or him? These wasted not his heart or limb; My brother's soul was of that mould Which in a palace had grown cold, Had his free breathing been denied The range of the steep mountain's side; But why delay the truth ?-he died. I saw, and could not hold his head, Nor reach his dying hand—nor dead,— Though hard I strove, but strove in vain, To rend and gnash my bonds in twain. He died—and they unlock'd his chain, And scoop'd for him a shallow grave Even from the cold earth of our cave. I begg'd them, as a boon, to lay His corse in dust whereon the day Might shine-it was a foolish thought, But then within my brain it wrought, That even in death his freeborn breast In such a dungeon could not rest. I might have spared my idle prayerThey coldly laugh'd-and laid him there : The flat and turfless earth above The being we so much did love; His empty chain above it leant, Such murder's fitting monument !

But he, the favourite and the flower,
Most cherish'd since his natal hour,