While powers of inind almost of boundless range, Seen in their sad reality, Complete in kind, as various in their change ; Were not as things that gods despise, While Eloquence, Wit, Poesy, and Mirth, What was thy pity's recompense ? That humbler Harmonist of care on Earth, A silent suffering, and intense ; Survive within our souls-while lives our sense The rock, the vulture, and the chain, Of pride in Merit's proud pre-eminence, All that the proud can feel of pain, Long shall we seek his likeness, long in vain, The agony they do not show, And turn to all of him which may remain, The suffocating sense of woe, Sighing that Nature form'd but one such man, Which speaks but in its loneliness, And then is jealous lest the sky Until its voice is echoless. Titan I to thee the strife was given Between the suffering and the will, Which torture where they cannot kill ; I STOOD beside the grave of him who blazed And the inexorable Heaven, The comet of a season, and I saw And the deaf tyranny of Fate, The humblest of all sepulchres, and gazed The ruling principle of Hate, With not the less of sorrow and of awe Which for its pleasure doth create Moto On that neglected turf and quiet stone, The things it may annihilate, With name no clearer than the names unknown, Refused thee even the boon to die : Which lay unread around it; and I ask'd The wretched gift Eternity The Gardener of that ground, why it might be Was thine-and thou hast borne it well. That for this plant strangers his memory task'd, All that the Thunderer wrung from thee , Through the thick deaths of half a century ? Was but the menace which flung back And thus he answer'd: Well, I do not know On him the torments of thy rack; Why frequent travellers turn to pilgrims so; The fate thou didst so well foresee, tot He died before my day of Sextonship, But would not to appease him tell; ein: And I had not the digging of this grave.' And in thy Silence was his Sentence, And is this all ? I thought--and do we rip And in his soul a vain repentance, The vale of Immortality, and craye And evil dread so ill dissembled, ,837 I know not what of honour and of light, That in his hand the lightnings trembled. Do Through unborn ages, to endure this blight, So soon, and so successless ? As I said, Thy godlike crime was to be kind.. The Architect of all on which we tread, To render with thy precepts less e For Earth is but a tombstone, did essay The sum of human wretchedness, To extricate remembrance from the clay, And strengthen Man with his own mind; Whose minglings might confuse a Newton's thought, But baffled as thou wert from high, Were it not that all life must end in one, Still in thy patient energy, E Of which we are but dreamers--as he caught In the endurance, and repulsen As 'twere the twilight of a former Sun, Of thine impenetrable Spirit, Thus spoke he: I believe the man of whom ) Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse, You wot, who lies in this selected tomb, A mighty lesson we inherit ! Was a most famous writer in his day, Thou art a symbol and a sign And therefore travellers step from out their way To mortals of their fate and forc To pay him honour,-and myself whate'er Like thee Man is in part divine, Your honour pleases.' Then most pleased I shook A troubled stream from a pure source ; From out my pocket's avaricious nook ! And Man in portions can foreseen Some certain coins of silver, which as 'twere His own funereal destiny; Toll Perforce I gave this man, though I could spare llis wretchedness, and his resistance, So much but inconveniently :-Ye smile, And his sad unallied existence: I see ye, ye profane ones I all the while, To which his Spirit may oppose : 3225.74 Because my homely phrase the truth would tell. Itself-and equal to all woes, You are the fools, not I ; for I did dwell And a firm will, and a deep sense, the With a deep thought, and with a soften'd eye, Which even in torture can descry l oss On that old Sexton's natural homily,... Its own concentred recompense, In which there was Obscurity and Fame . Triumphant where it dares defy, 's-Sore The glory and the Nothing of a Name. it And making Death a Victory strona 2 SPIT Stone; f PROMETHEUS. The sufferings of mortality,", . A FRAGMENT. I would not trace again the stream of hours A VERY MOURNFUL BALLAD Between their outworn banks of wither'd flowers, ON THE SIEGE AND CONQUEST OF ALHAMA. But bid it flow as now-until it glides Which, in the Arabic language, is to the following Into the number of the nameless tides. purport. The Moorish King rides up and down What is this Death ?-a quiet of the heart! Through Granada's royal town; The whole of that of which we are a part ? From Elvira's gates to those For life is but a vision--what I see of Bivarambla on he goes. Of all that lives alone is life to me; Woe is me, Alhama ! Letters to the monarch tell How Alhama's city fell : With sad remembrances our hours of rest. In the fire the scroll he threw, And the messenger he slew. The absent are the dead--for they are cold, Woe is me, Alhama ! And ne'er can be what once we did behold; lle quits-his mule, and mounts bis horse, And they are changed, and cheerless, -or if yet And through the street directs his course; The unforgotten do not all forget, Through the street of Zacatin Since thus divided-equal must it be To the Alhambra spurring in. Woe is nie, Alhama ! When the Alhambra walls he gain'd, On the moment he ordain'd The under-earth inhabitants-are they That the trumpet straight should sound But mingled millions decomposed to clay? With the silver clarion round, Woe is me, Alhama ! And when the hollow drums of war Beat the loud alarm afar, Or have they their own language? and a sense That the Moors of town and plain Of breathless being ?-darkend and intense Might answer to the martial strain. Woe is me, Alhaina ! Then the Moors, by this aware That bloody Mars recalled themrthere, Of thy profundity is in the grave, One by one, and two by two, The ebon portal of thy peopled cave, To a mighty squadron grew. Where I would walk in spirit, and behold Woe is me, Alhama ! Our elements resolved to things untold, Out then spake an aged Moor And fathom-hidden wonders, and explore In these words the king before, •Wherefore call on us, O King ? Woe is me, Alhaina ! SONNET TO LAKE LEMAN, Friends . ye have, alas ! to know Woe is inc, Alhama ! ROUSSEAU_Voltaire--our Gibbon-and De Staël Leman! these names are worthy of thy shore,* Of mighty minds doth hallow in the core Where dwelt the wise and wondrous; but by thee, How much more, Lake of Beauty I do we feel, In sweetly gliding o'er thy crystal sea, Which of the heirs of immortality Out then spake old Alfaqui, Woe is me, Alhama ! Woe is me, Alhama ! • Geneva, Verney, Copet, Lausanne, Thee and thine, thy crown and realm, And from the windows o'er the walls The sable web of mourning falls; The King weeps as a woman o'er His loss, for it is much and sorc. "He who holds no laws in awe, Woe is me, Alhama! STANZAS FOR MUSIC. THEY say that hope is happiness; But genuine love must prize the past, The Monarch's wrath began to rise, And Memory wakes the thoughts that blessi Because he answered, and because They rose the first-they set the last; And all that Memory loves the most Was once our only Hope to be, • There is no law to say such things And all that hope adored and lost Hath melted into Memory, Alas! it is delusion all; The future cheats us from afar, Nor can we be what we recall, Nor dare we think on what we are. TO THOMAS MOORE. My boat is on the shore, And to fix thy head upon And my bark is on the sea; High Alhambra's loftiest stone; 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, • But on my soul Alhama weighs, It hath springs that may be won. Were't the last drop in the well, As I gasped upon the brink, Ere my fainting spirit fell, 'Tis to thee that I would drink, • Sires have lost their children, wives Their lords, and valiant men their lives; With that water, as this wine, One what best his love might claim The libation I would pour Should be-Peace with thine and mine, And a health to thee, Tom Moore. TO SAMUEL ROGERS, ESQ. ABSENT or present, still to thee, My friend, what magic spells belong! As all can tell, who share, like me, In turn thy converse and thy song. But when the dreaded hour shall coine, 'Twas carried, as the King decreed. By Friendship ever deem'd too nigh, And MEMORY' o'er her Druid's tomb Shall weep that aught of thee can die, How fondly will she then repay Thy homage offer'd at her shrine, And blend, while ages roll away. Her name inmortally with this! ODE ON VENICE. When Faintness, the last nortal birth of Pain, And apathy of limb, the dull beginning 1818. of the cold staggering race which Death is winning, THE "Ode to Venice" was written during the period Steals vein by vein and pulse by pulse away; of Byron's residence in the city of a hundred isles," Yet so relieving the o'er-tortured clay, n 1818. Shelley, who visited him at that period, used To him appears renewal of his breath, to say that all he observed of the workings of Byron's And freedom the mere numbness of his chain ; mind during his visit, gave him a far higher idea of And then he talks of life, and how again its powers than he had ever before entertained. He feels his spirit soaring-albeit weak, And of the fresher air, which he would seek: The city, the history of which is so full of romantic And as he whispers knows not that he gasps, and poetic incidents, suggested also the poet's two That his thin finger feels not what it clasps, dramas, "Marino Faliero 'and the “Two Foscari." And so the film comes o'er him, and the dizzy The lament for the lost glory of the Ocean Queen Chamber swims round and round, and shadows has happily not proved prophetic. busy, "There is no Hope for Nations," cannot be said of At which he vainly catches, fit and gleam, Till the last rattle chokes the strangled scream, the ransomed Venetia, who shares the hopes, the And all is ice and blackness,--and the earth energies, and the future of young Italy. There was That which it was the moment ere our birth, something prosaic, and like this workaday nineteenth century, in the means employed for her deliverance; II. but the origin of her freedom may be traced back to There is no hope for nations -Search the page the fields of Magenta and Solferino, red with the best Of many thousand years, the daily scene, blood of her brethren.-Edit. The flow and ebb of each recurring age, The everlasting to be which hath been, Hath taught us nought, or little : still we lean On Venice ! Venice ! when thy marble walls On things that rot beneath our weight, and wear Are level with the waters, there shall be Our strength away in wrestling with the air : A cry of nations o'er thy sunken halls, For 'tis our nature strikes us down : the beasts A loud lament along the sweeping sea! Slaughter'd in hourly hecatombs for feasts If I, a northern wanderer, weep for thee, Are of as high an order--they must go What should thy sons do?-anything but weep: Even where their driver goads them, though to And yet they only murmur in their sleep. slaughter. In contrast with their fathers-as the slime, Ye men, who pour your blood for kings as water, The dull green ooze of the receding deep, What have they given your children in return? Is with the dashing of the spring-tide foam A heritage of servitude and woes, That drives the sailor shipless to his home, A blindfold bondage, where your hire is blows. Are they to those that were ; and thus they creep, What I do not yet the red-hot plough-shares burn, Crouching and crab-like, through their sapping O'er which you stumble in a false ordeal, streets. And deem this proof of loyalty the real; Oh ! agony-that centuries should reap Kissing the hand that guides you to your scars, No mellower harvest! Thirteen hundred years And glorying as you tread the glowing bars? of wealth and glory turn'd to dust and tears, All that your sires have left you, all that Time And every monument the stranger meets, Bequeaths of free, and History of sublime, Church, palace, pillar, as a mourner greets; Spring from a different theme! Ye see and read, And even the Lion all subdued appears, Admire and sigh, and then succumb and bleed ! And the harsh sound of the barbarian drum, Save the few spirits who, despite of all, With dull and daily dissonance, repeats And worse than all, the sudden crimes engender'd The ccho of thy tyrant's voice along By the down-thundering of the prison-wall, The soft waves, once all musical to song, And thirst to swallow the sweet waters tender'd, That heaved beneath the moonlight with the throng Gushing from Freedom's fountains, when the crowd, Of gondolas-and to the busy hum Madden'd with centuries of drought, are loud, Of cheerful creatures, whose inost sinful deeds And trample on each other to obtain Were but the overbeating of the heart, The cup which brings oblivion of a chain And flow of too much happiness, which needs Heavy and sore, in which long yoked they plough'd The aid of age to turn its course apart The sand, -or if there sprung the yellow grain, From the luxuriant and voluptuous flood 'Twas not for them, their necks were too much Of sweet sensations, battling with the blood. bow'd, But these are better than the gloomy errors, And their dead palates chew'd the cud of pain : The weeds of nations in their last decay, Yes I the few spirits, --who, despite of deeds When Vice walks forth with her unsosten'd terrors, Which they abhor, confound not with the cause And Mirth is madness, and but smiles to slay; Those momentary starts froin Nature's laws, And Hope is nothing but a false delay, Which, like the pestilence and earthquake, smite The sick man's lightning half an hour ere death, But for a term, then pass, and leave the earth With all her seasons to repair the blight As if his senseless sceptre were a wand With a few summers, and again put forth Full of the magic of exploded scienceCities and generations-fair, when frec Still one great clime, in full and free defiance, For, Tyranny, there blooms no bud for thee! Yet rears her crest, unconquer'd and sublime, Above the far Atlantic !-She has taught 111. Her Esau-brethren that the haughty flag, Glory and Empire ! once upon these towers The floating fence of Albion's feebler crag, With Freedom-godlike Triad! how ye sate ! May strike to those whose red right hands have The league of mightiest nations, in those hours bought When Venice was an envy, might abate, Rights cheaply earn'd with blood. Still, still for But did not quench her spirit; in her fate ever, All were enwrapp'd: the feasted monarchs knew Better, though each man's life-blood were a river, And loved their hostess, nor could learn to hate, That it should flow, and overflow, than creep Although they humbled-with the kingly few Through thousand lazy channels in our veins, The many felt, for from all days and climes Damm'd like the dull canal with locks and chains, She was the voyager's worship; even her crimes And moving, as a sick man in his sleep, Were of the softer order-born of Love, Three paces, and then faltering better be She drank no blood, nor fattend on the dead, Where the extinguish'd Spartans still are free, But gladden'd where her harmless conquests spread In their proud charnel of Thermopylae, For these restored the Cross, that from above Than stagnate in our marsh,-or o'er the deep Hallow'd her sheltering banners, which incessant Fly, and one current to the ocean add, Flew between earth and the unholy Crescent, One spirit to the souls our fathers had, One freeman more, America, to thee! TRANSLATION FROM VITTORELLI. And call'd the ‘kingdom of a conquering foe, ON A NUN. But knows what all-and, most of all, we know Sonnet composed in the name of a father, whose With what set gilded terms a tyran: juggles! daughter had recently died shortly after her mar. riage; and addressed to the father of her who had IV. lately taken the veil. O'er the three fractions of the groaning globe; Heaven made us happy; and now, wretched sires, And gazing upon either, both required. Mine, while the torch of Hymen newly fired His chainless mountains, 'tis but for a time, Becomes extinguish'd, soon-too soon-expires : For tyranny of iate is cunning grown, But thine, within the closing grate retired, Eternal captive, to her God aspires. Which shuts between your never-meeting eyes, Are kept apart and nursed in the devotion May'st hear her sweet and pious voice once more : Of Freedom, which their fathers fought for, and I to the marble, where my daughter lies, Bequeath'd-a heritage of heart and hand, Rush,--the swoln flood of bitterness I pour, And proud distinction from each other land, And knock, and knock, and knock-but none Whose sons must bow them at a monarch's motion, replies. |