Of the three hundred grant but three, To make a new Thermopyla!

What silent still? and silent all?

Ah! no;-the voices of the dead Sound like a distant torrent's fall,

And answer, "Let one living head, But one arise, we come, we come!" Tis but the living who are dumb.

In vain-in vain: strike other chords:

Fill high the cup with Samian wine! Leave battles to the Turkish hordes, And shed the blood of Scio's vine! Hark! rising to the ignoble call— How answers each bold Bacchanal!

You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet:
Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone?
Of two such lessons, why forget

The nobler and the manlier one?
You have the letters Cadmus gave-
Think ye he meant them for a slave?

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine! We will not think of themes like these! It made Anacreon's song divine;

He served but served PolycratesA tyrant; but our masters then

Were still, at least, our countrymen.

The tyrant of the Chersonese

Was freedom's best and bravest friend; That tyrant was Miltiades!

Oh! that the present hour would lend Another despot of the kind!

Such chains as his were sure to bind.

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
On Suli's rock, and Parga's shore,
Exists the remnant of a line

Such as the Doric mothers bore;
And there, perhaps, some seed is sown,
'The Heracleidan blood might own.

Trust not for freedom to the Franks, They have a king who buys and sells; in native swords and native ranks,

The only hope of courage dwells:
But Turkish force, and Latin fraud,
Would break your shield, however broad.

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
Our virgins dance beneath the shade-
see their glorious black eyes shine;
But gazing on each glowing maid,
My own the burning tear-drop laves,
To think such breasts must suckle slaves.

Form'd a sepulchral melodrame. Of all

The fools who flock'd to swell or see the show,

Who cared about the corpse? The funeral Made the attraction, and the black the woe. There throbb'd not there a thought which pierced the pall;

And, when the gorgeous coffin was laid low,

It seem'd the mockery of hell to fold
The rottenness of eighty years in gold.

1 This satire was written as an answer to the Poet Laureate Southey's official elegy on George III, A Vision of Judgment, 1821, in which is given an account of the assumption of the monarch into Heaven. The second selection is a part of a debate between Satan and the Archangel Michael concerning George III's title to salvation, Witnesses are summoned, including Junius. At the close Southey appears and begins to read his poem.

Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon

Of human thought or form,-where art thou gone?

Why dost thou pass away and leave our

state,

This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?

Ask why the sunlight not forever
Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain

river,

Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown,

Why fear and dream and death and birth

Cast on the daylight of this earth

Such gloom,-why man has such a scope For love and hate, despondency and hope?

No voice from some sublimer world hath ever To sage or poet these responses givenTherefore the names of Dæmon, Ghost, and Heaven,

Remain the records of their vain endeavor, Frail spells-whose uttered charm might not avail to sever,

From all we hear and all we see, Doubt, chance, and mutability. Thy light alone-like mist o'er mountains driven,

Or music by the night wind sent, Through strings of some still instrument,

Or moonlight on a midnight stream, Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.

Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds depart

And come, for some uncertain moments lent.

Man were immortal, and omnipotent, Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art, Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart.

Thou messenger of sympathies, That wax and wane in lovers' eyesThou that to human thought art nourish

ment,

Like darkness to a dying flame! Depart not as thy shadow came, Depart not-lest the grave should be, Like life and fear, a dark reality.

While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped

Through many a listening chamber, cave, and ruin,

And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing

Hopes of high talk with the departed dead. I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed,

I was not heard-I saw them not-
When musing deeply on the lot

Of life, at the sweet time when winds are wooing

All vital things that wake to bring
News of birds and blossoming,—
Sudden, thy shadow fell on me;

I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy!

I vowed that I would dedicate my powers To thee and thine-have I not kept the Vow?

With beating heart and streaming eyes,

even now

I call the phantoms of a thousand hours Each from his voiceless grave: they have in visioned bowers

Of studious zeal or love's delight Outstretched with me the envious night

They know that never joy illumed my brow Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free

This world from its dark slavery,

That thou-O awful LOVELINESS, Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express.

The day becomes more solemn and serene
When noon is past-there is a harmony
In autumn, and a luster in its sky,
Which through the summer is not heard or
seen,

As if it could not be, as if it had not been!
Thus let thy power, which like the truth
Of nature on my passive youth
Descended, to my onward life supply

Its calm-to one who worships thee, And every form containing thee, Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind To fear himself, and love all human kind.

ODE TO THE WEST WIND

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

I

O, wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,