Speak! from thy storm-black Heaven O speak aloud!
And on the darkling foe

Open thine eye of fire from some uncertain cloud!
O dart the flash! O rise and deal the blow!
The Past to thee, to thee the Future cries!
Hark! how wide Nature joins her groans below!
Rise, God of Nature! rise."

VI.

The voice had ceased, the vision fled;
Yet still I gasped and reeled with dread.
And ever, when the dream of night
Renews the phantom to my sight,
Cold sweat-drops gather on my limbs ;

My ears throb hot; my eye-balls start;
My brain with horrid tumult swims;
Wild is the tempest of my heart;
And my thick and struggling breath
Imitates the toil of death!
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,
O Albion! O my mother Isle !
Thy valleys, fair as Eden's bowers,
Glitter green with sunny showers;
Thy grassy uplands' gentle swells

Echo to the bleat of flocks;
(Those grassy hills, those glittering dells
Proudly ramparted with rocks)
And Ocean mid his uproar wild
Speaks safety to his island-child,

Hence for many a fearless age

Has social Quiet loved thy shore ; 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 pride-
Mid 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 wondering
Shall hear Destruction, like a vulture, scream!
Strange-eyed Destruction! who with many a dream
Of central fires through nether seas upthundering
Soothes her fierce solitude; yet as she lies
By livid fount, or red volcanic stream,
If ever to her lidless dragon-eyes,

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!

unpartaking of the evil thing,

F

With daily prayer and daily toil
Soliciting for food my scanty soil,

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.

ODE TO GEORGIANA, DUCHESS OF

DEVONSHIRE,

66

ON THE TWENTY-FOURTH STANZA IN HER PASSAGE

OVER MOUNT GOTHARD."

"And hail the chapel! hail the platform wild!
Where Tell directed the avenging dart,

With well strung arm, that first preserved his child,
Then aimed the arrow at the tyrant's heart."

PLENDOUR'S fondly fostered child!
And did you hail the platform wild,
Where once the Austrian fell
Beneath the shaft of Tell!

O Lady, nursed in pomp and pleasure!
Whence learn'd you that heroic measure?

Light as a dream your days their circlets ran,

From all that teaches brotherhood to Man

Far, far removed! from want, from hope, from fear!

Enchanting music lulled your infant ear,

Obeisance, praises soothed your infant heart:

Emblasonments and old ancestral crests, With many a bright obtrusive form of art,

Detained your eye from nature: stately vests, That veiling strove to deck your charms divine, Rich viands and the pleasurable wine,

Were

yours unearned by toil; nor could you see The unenjoying toiler's misery.

And yet, free Nature's uncorrupted child,
You hailed the chapel and the platform wild,
Where once the Austrian fell

Beneath the shaft of Tell!

O Lady, nursed in pomp and pleasure!
Whence learn'd you that heroic measure?

There crowd your finely-fibred frame,
All living faculties of bliss ;
And Genius to your cradle came,
His forehead wreathed with lambent flame,
And bending low, with godlike kiss
Breath'd in a more celestial life;
But boasts not many a fair compeer,

A heart as sensitive to joy and fear ?
And some, perchance, might wage an equal strife,
Some few, to nobler being wrought,
Corrivals in the nobler gift of thought.

Yet these delight to celebrate
Laurelled war and plumy state;
Or in verse and music dress
Tales of rustic happiness-

Pernicious tales ! insidious strains!
That steel the rich man's breast,
And mock the lot unblest,

The sordid vices and the abject pains,
Which evermore must be

But

The doom of ignorance and penury! you, free Nature's uncorrupted child, You hailed the chapel and the platform wild, Where once the Austrian fell

Beneath the shaft of Tell!

O Lady, nursed in pomp and pleasure!
Whence learn'd you that heroic measure ?

You were a mother! That most holy name,
Which Heaven and Nature bless,

I

may not vilely prostitute to those

Whose infants owe them less

Than the poor caterpillar owes

Its gaudy parent fly.

You were a mother! at your bosom fed

The babes that loved you. You, with laughing eye, Each twilight thought, each nascent feeling read, Which you yourself created. Oh! delight!

A second time to be a mother,

Without the mother's bitter groans:

Another thought, and yet another,

By touch, or taste, by looks or tones

O'er the growing sense to roll,

The mother of your infant's soul!

The Angel of the Earth, who, while he guides
His chariot-planet round the goal of day,
All trembling gazes on the eye of God,

A moment turned his awful face away;
And as he viewed you, from his aspect sweet
New influences in your being rose,

Blest intuitions and communions fleet

With living Nature, in her joys and woes!
Thenceforth your soul rejoiced to see
The shrine of social Liberty!