To breathe my scorn upon ye-earthly strength

To wrestle, though with spirits; what ye take

Shall be ta'en limb by limb.
Spirit.

Reluctant mortal! Is this the Magian who would so pervade The world invisible, and make himself Almost our equal? Can it be that thou Art thus in love with life? the very life Which made thee wretched!

Man. Thou false fiend, thou liest! My life is in its last hour,-that I know, Nor would redeem a moment of that hour;

I do not combat against death, but thee And thy surrounding angels; my past power,

Was purchased by no compact with thy

crew,

But by superior science-penance, daring,

And length of watching, strength of mind, and skill

In knowledge of our fathers-when the earth

Saw men and spirits walking side by side,

And gave ye no supremacy: I stand Upon my strength-I do defy-denySpurn back, and scorn ye!

Man. What are they to such as thee? Must crimes be punish'd but by other crimes, [hell! And greater criminals?-Back to thy Thou hast no power upon me, that I feel; [know: Thou never shalt possess me, that I What I have done is done; I bear within A torture which could nothing gain from thine:

The mind which is immortal makes itself Requital for its good or evil thoughts,Is its own origin of ill and end

And its own place and time: its innate

sense,

When stripp'd of this mortality, derives No color from the fleeting things without,

But is absorb'd in sufferance or in joy, Born from the knowledge of its own desert.

Thou didst not tempt me, and thou couldst not tempt me;

I have not been thy dupe, nor am thy

prey

But was my own destroyer and will be My own hereafter.-Back, ye baffled fiends!

The hand of death is on me-but not yours! [The Demons disappear. Abbot. Alas! how pale thou art-thy lips are white

And thy breast heaves-and in thy gasping throat

The accents rattle: Give thy prayers to heaven

Pray-albeit but in thought,--but die not thus.

Man. 'Tis over-my dull eyes can fix thee not;

But all things swim around me, and the earth

Heaves as it were beneath me. Fare thee well!

TO THOMAS MOORE

My boat is on the shore,

And my bark is on the sea; But, before I go, Tom Moore,

Here's a double health to thee!

Here's a sigh to those who love me,
And a smile to those who hate;
And, whatever sky's above me,
Here's a heart for every fate.

Though the ocean roar around me,
Yet it still shall bear me on;
Though a desert should surround me,
It hath springs that may be won.

Were't the last drop in the well,
As I gasp'd upon the brink,
Ere my fainting spirit fell,

"Tis to thee that I would drink.

With that water, as this wine,
The libation I would pour
Should be-peace with thine and mine,
And a health to thee, Tom Moore.
July, 1817. 1821.

In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more, And silent rows the songless gondolier; Her palaces are crumbling to the shore, And music meets not always now the

ear:

Those days are gone-but Beauty still is here.

States fall, arts fade-but Nature doth not die,

Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear,

The pleasant place of all festivity,
The revel of the earth, the masque of
Italy!

But unto us she hath a spell beyond
Her name in story, and her long array
Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms
despond

Above the dogeless city's vanish'd sway:
Ours is a trophy which will not decay
With the Rialto; Shylock and the Moor,
And Pierre, cannot be swept or worn

Although I found her thus, we did not part,

Perchance even dearer in her day of woe, Than when she was a boast, a marvel and a show.

I can repeople with the past-and of The present there is still for eye and thought,

And meditation chasten'd down, enough; And more, it may be, than I hoped or sought;

And of the happiest moments which were wrought

Within the web of my existence, some From thee, fair Venice! have their colors caught:

There are some feelings Time cannot benumb,

Nor Torture shake, or mine would now be cold and dumb.

But my soul wanders; I demand it back To meditate amongst decay, and stand [St. 25 A ruin amidst ruins; there to track Fall'n states and buried greatness, o'er a land

Which was the mightiest in its old command,

And is the loveliest, and must ever be The master-mould of Nature's heavenly hand;

Wherein were cast the heroic and the free,

The beautiful, the brave, the lords of earth and sea,

flows

The deep-dyed Brenta, where their hues instil

The odorous purple of a new born rose. Which streams upon her stream, and glass'd within it glows,

Fill'd with the face of heaven, which, from afar,

Comes down upon the waters; all its hues,

From the rich sunset to the rising star, Their magical variety diffuse:

And now they change; a paler shadow strews

Its mantle o'er the mountains; parting day

Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues

With a new color as it gasps away,

In their shut breast their petty misery. What are our woes and sufferance} Come and see

The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way

O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, Ye!

Whose agonies are evils of a dayA world is at our feet as fragile as our clay.

The Niobe of nations! there she stands, Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe;

An empty urn within her wither'd hands,

Whose holy dust was scatter'd long ago; The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now, The very sepulchres lie tenantless

Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow, Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness?

Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress.

The Goth, the Christian, Time, War, Flood, and Fire,

Have dealt upon the seven-hill'd city's pride;

She saw her glories star by star expire, And up the steep barbarian monarchs ride,

Where the car climb'd the Capitol; far and wide

Temple and tower went down, nor left a site:

Chaos of ruins! who shall trace the void, O'er the dim fragments cast a lunar light,

And say, "here was, or is," where all is doubly night?

Can tyrants but by tyrants conquer'd be, And Freedom find no champion and no

child

Such as Columbia saw arise when she Sprung forth a Pallas, arm'd and undefiled?

Or must such minds be nourish'd in the wild,

Deep in the unpruned forest, 'midst the

roar

Of cataracts, where nursing Nature smiled

On infant Washington? Has Earth no

more

Such seeds within her breast, or Europe no such shore?

Hues which have words, and speak to ye of heaven,

Floats o'er this vast and wondrous monument,

And shadows forth its glory. There is given

Unto the things of earth, which Time hath bent,

A spirits feeling, and where he hath leant

His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power

And magic in the ruin'd battlement,
For which the palace of the present hour
Must yield its pomp, and wait till ages
are its dower.

And here the buzz of eager nations ran, In murmur'd pity, or loud-roar'd applause,

As man was slaughter' by his fellow

man.

And wherefore slaughter'd? wherefore, but because

Such were the bloody Circus' genial laws,

lay,

There were his young barbarians all at play,

There was their Dacian mother-he, their sire,

Butcher'd to make a Roman holidayAll this rush'd with his blood-Shall he expire

And unavenged? Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire!

But here, where Murder breathed her bloody steam;

And here, where buzzing nations choked the ways,

And roar'd or murmur'd like a mountain stream

Dashing or winding as its torrent strays; Here, where the Roman million's blame or praise

Was death or life, the playthings of a crowd,

My voice sounds much-and fall the stars' faint rays

On the arena void-seats crush'd, walls bow'd

And galleries, where my steps seem echoes strangely loud.