Rush around her narrow dwelling! Dance, like death-fires, round her tomb! IV. Departing Year! 'twas on no earthly shore Thou storied'st thy sad hours! Silence ensued, Deep silence o'er the ethereal multitude, Whose locks with wreaths, whose wreaths with glories shone. Then, his eye wild ardours glancing, The spirit of the Earth made reverence meet, V. Throughout the blissful throng, Till wheeling round the throne the Lampads seven, (The mystic Words of Heaven) The fervent Spirit bowed, then spread his wings and spake ! "Thou in stormy blackness throning Love and uncreated Light, And hunger's bosom to the frost winds bared! Strange, horrible, and foul! By what deep guilt belongs To the deaf Synod, 'full of gifts and lies!' By wealth's insensate laugh! by torture's howl! Avenger, rise! For ever shall the thankless Island scowl, Her quiver full, and with unbroken bow? Speak! from thy storm-black Heaven O speak aloud! And on the darkling foe Open thine eye of fire from some uncertain cloud! The Past to thee, to thee the Future cries! VI. The voice had ceased, the vision fled; And ever, when the dream of night No stranger agony confounds The soldier on the war-field spread, When all foredone with toil and wounds, Death-like he dozes among heaps of dead! (The strife is o'er, the day-light fled, And the night-wind clamours hoarse! See! the starting wretch's head Lies pillowed on a brother's corse!) VII. Not yet enslaved, not wholly vile, Nor ever proud invader's rage Or sacked thy towers, or stained thy fields with gore. VIII. Abandoned of Heaven! mad avarice thy guide, At cowardly distance, yet kindling with prideMid thy herds and thy corn-fields secure thou hast stood, And joined the wild yelling of famine and blood! The nations curse thee! They with eager won dering Shall hear Destruction, like a vulture, scream! Strange-eyed Destruction! who with many a dream Of central fires through nether seas upthundering O Albion thy predestined ruins rise, The fiend-hag on her perilous couch doth leap, Muttering distempered triumph in her charmed sleep. IX. Away, my soul, away! In vain, in vain the birds of warning singAnd hark! I hear the famished brood of prey Flap their lank pennons on the groaning wind! Away, my soul, away! I unpartaking of the evil thing, With daily prayer and daily toil Have wailed my country with a loud Lament. Now I recentre my immortal mind In the deep sabbath of meek self-content; Cleansed from the vaporous passions that bedim God's Image, sister of the Seraphim. FRANCE. AN ODE. I. YE Clouds! that far above me float and pause, Ye Woods! that listen to the night-birds singing, My moonlight way o'er flowering weeds I wound, By each rude shape and wild unconquerable sound! |