III.

I marked Ambition in his war-array!

I heard the mailed Monarch's troublous cry-
"Ah! wherefore does the Northern Conqueress stay!
Groans not her chariot on its onward way ?"
Fly, mailed Monarch, fly!

Stunned by Death's twice mortal mace,
No more on murder's lurid face

The insatiate hag shall gloat with drunken eye!
Manes of the unnumbered slain!

Ye that gasped on Warsaw's plain!
Ye that erst at Ismail's tower,
When human ruin choked the streams,
Fell in conquest's glutted hour,
'Mid women's shrieks and infants' screams!
Spirits of the uncoffined slain,

Sudden blasts of triumph swelling,

Oft, at night, in misty train,

Rush around her narrow dwelling!

The exterminating fiend is fled-
(Foul her life, and dark her doom)

Mighty armies of the dead

Dance, like death-fires, round her tomb!

Then with prophetic song relate,

Each some tyrant-murderer's fate!

IV.

Departing Year! 'twas on no earthly shore
My soul beheld thy vision! Where alone,
Voiceless and stern, before the cloudy throne,
Aye Memory sits: thy robe inscribed with gore,

With many an unimaginable groan

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,
From the choired gods advancing,

The Spirit of the Earth made reverence meet,
And stood up, beautiful, before the cloudy seat.

V.

Throughout the blissful throng,
Hushed were harp and song:

Till wheeling round the throne the Lampads seven, (The mystic Words of Heaven)

Permissive signal make:

The fervent Spirit bowed, then spread his wings and spake!

"Thou in stormy blackness throning
Love and uncreated Light,
By the Earth's unsolaced groaning,
Seize thy terrors, Arm of might!
By peace with proffered insult scared,
Masked hate and envying scorn!
By years of havoc yet unborn!

And hunger's bosom to the frost-winds bared!
But chief by Afric's wrongs,

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 fee

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;

M

Thy grassy uplands' gentle swells

Echo to the bleat of flocks;

(Those grassy hills, those glittering dells
Proudly ramparted with rocks)

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!

I unpartaking of the evil thing,
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.

FRANCE. AN ODE.

I.

YE Clouds that far above me float and pause,
Whose pathless march no mortal may control!
Ye Ocean-Waves! that, wheresoe'er ye roll,
Yield homage only to eternal laws!

Ye Woods! that listen to the night-birds singing,
Midway the smooth and perilous slope reclined,
Save when your own imperious branches swinging,
Have made a solemn music of the wind!
Where, like a man beloved of God,
Through glooms, which never woodman trod,
How oft, pursuing fancies holy,

My moonlight way o'er flowering weeds I wound,
Inspired, beyond the guess of folly,

By each rude shape and wild unconquerable sound! loud Waves! and O ye Forests high!

ye

And O ye clouds that far above me soared! Thou rising Sun! thou blue rejoicing Sky!