Like a glow-worm golden In a dell of dew, Scattering unbeholden Its aërial hue Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view : Like a rose embowered In its own green leaves, By warm winds deflowered, Till the scent it gives Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-wingèd thieves: Sound of vernal showers On the twinkling grass, Rain-awakened flowers, All that ever was Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass : Teach us, sprite or bird, What sweet thoughts are thine : I have never heard Praise of love or wine That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. Chorus Hymenæal, Or triumphal chaunt, Matched with thine would be all But an empty vaunt, A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. What objects are the fountains Of thy happy strain? What fields, or waves, or mountains? What shapes of sky or plain? What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain? With thy clear keen joyance Languor cannot be : Shadow of annoyance Never came near thee: Thou lovest; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. Waking or asleep, Thou of death must deem Things more true and deep Than we mortals dream, Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream? We look before and after, And pine for what is not: Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. Zet f we could scom Hate, and pride, and fear; If we were things born Not to shed a ear, I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. Better than all measures Of delightful sound, Better than all treasures That in books are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou scorer of the ground! Teach me half the gladness That thy brain must know, Such harmonious madness From my lips would flow, The world should listen then, as I am listening now. ODE TO LIBERTY. Yet, Freedom, yet thy banner torn but flying, BYRON. I. A GLORIOUS people vibrated again : The lightning of the nations, Liberty, From heart to heart, from tower to tower, o'er Spain, Scattering contagious fire into the sky, Gleamed. My soul spurned the chains of its dismay, And, in the rapid plumes of song, Clothed itself, sublime and strong; As a young eagle soars the morning clouds among, Hovering in verse o'er its accustomed prey; Till from its station in the heaven of fame The Spirit's whirlwind rapt it, and the ray Of the remotest sphere of living flame Which paves the void was from behind it flung, As foam from a ship's swiftness, when there came A voice out of the deep: I will record the same. II. The Sun and the serenest Moon sprang forth : Into the depths of heaven. The dædal earth, But this divinest universe Was yet a chaos and a curse, For thou wert not: but power from worst producing worse, The spirit of the beasts was kindled there, And of the birds, and of the watery forms, And there was war among them, and despair Within them, raging without truce or terms: The bosom of their violated nurse Groaned, for beasts warred on beasts, and worms on worms, And men on men ; each heart was as a hell of storms. ; III. Man, the imperial shape, then multiplied Temple and prison, to many a swarming million, Was savage, cunning, blind, and rude, For thou wert not; but o'er the populous solitude, |