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Farewell to thee, France!-but when Liberty rallies |
Once more in thy regions, remember me then-
The violet still grows in the depth of thy valleys;
Though wither'd, thy tears will unfold it again-
Yet, yet, I may baffle the hosts that surround us,
And yet may thy heart leap awake to my voice-
There are links which must break in the chain that
has bound us,

Then turn thee and call on the Chief of thy choice.

WRITTEN ON A BLANK LEAF OF "THE PLEASURES OF MEMORY."

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 come
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 immortally with thine!
April 19th, 1812.

SONNET.

ROUSSEAU-Voltaire-our Gibbon-and de Staël-
Leman! these names are worthy of thy shore,
Thy shore of names like these! wert thou no more,
Their memory thy remembrance would recall;
To them thy banks were lovely as to all,

But they have made them lovelier, for the lore
Of mighty minds doth hallow in the core
Of human hearts the ruin of a wall

Where dwelt the wise and wond'rous; but by thee How much more, Lake of Beauty! do we feel. In sweetly gliding o'er thy crystal sea, The wild glow of that not ungentle zeal, Which of the heirs of immortality

Is proud, and makes the breath of glory real!

Then when nature around me is smiling,
The last smile which answers to mine,
I do not believe it beguiling,

Because it reminds me of thine;
And when winds are at war with the ocean,
As the breasts I believed in with me,
If their billows excite an emotion,

It is that they bear me from thee.

Though the rock of my last hope is shiver'd And its fragments are sunk in the wave, Though I feel that my soul is deliver'd

To pain-it shall not be its slave. There is many a pang to pursue me:

They may crush, but they shall not contemn They may torture, but shall not subdue me'Tis of thee that I think-not of them.

Though human, thou didst not deceive me,
Though woman, thou didst not forsake,
Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me,
Though slander'd, thou never couldst shake,
Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me,
Though parted, it was not to fly,
Though watchful, it was not to defame me,
Nor mute, that the world might belie.

Yet I blame not the world, nor despise it,
Nor the war of the many with one-
If my soul was not fitted to prize it,
"Twas folly not sooner to shun:
And if dearly that error hath cost me,
And more than I once could foresee,
I have found that, whatever it lost me,
It could not deprive me of thee.

From the wreck of the past, which hath perish'd Thus much I at least may recall,

It hath taught me that what I most cherish'd Deserved to be dearest of all:

In the desert a fountain is springing,

In the wide waste there still is a tree, And a bird in the solitude singing, Which speaks to my spirit of thee.

STANZAS TO

THOUGH the day of my destiny's over,
And the star of my fate hath declined,
Thy soft heart refused to discover

The faults which so many could find;
Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted,
It shrunk not to share it with me,
And the love which my spirit hath painted,
It never hath found but in thee.

⚫ Geneva, Ferney, Coppet, Lausanne.

↑ His sister, Mrs. Leigh.

DARKNESS.

I HAD a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came, and went-and came, and brought in
day,

And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watch-fires-and the thrones
The palaces of crowned kings-the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,
And men were gather'd round their blazing homes

To look once more into each other's face.
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;
Forests were set on fire-but hour by hour
They fell and faded-and the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash-and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled,
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again

With curses cast them down upon the dust,

CHURCHILL'S GRAVE.

A FACT LITERALLY RENDERED.

I STOOD beside the grave of him who blazed
The comet of a season, and I saw
The humblest of all sepulchres, and gazed
With not the less of sorrow and of awe
On that neglected turf and quiet stone,
With name no clearer than the names unknown,
|Which lay unread around it; and I ask'd
The Gardener of that ground, why it might be
That for this plant strangers his memory task'd
Through the thick deaths of half a century;
And thus he answer'd-" Well, I do not know
Why frequent travellers turn to pilgrims so;
He died before my day of Sextonship,

And gnash'd their teeth and howled: the wild birds And I had not the digging of this grave

shriek'd,

And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,

And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless-they were slain for food:
And War which for a moment was no more,
Did glut nimself again;-a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought—and that was death,
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails-men

And is this all? I thought,- and do we p
The veil of Immortality? and crave

I know not what of honor and of light
Through unborn ages, to endure this blight
So soon and so successless? As I said,
The Architect of all on which we tread,
For Earth is but a tombstone, did essay
To extricate remembrance from the clay,
Whose minglings might confuse a Newton's thought
Were it not that all life must end in one,
Of which we are but dreamers;-as he caught
As 'twere the twilight of a former Sun,
Thus spoke he,-"I believe the man of whom

Was a most famous writer in his day,

Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh; You wot, who lies in this selected tomb,
The meagre by the meagre were devour'd,
Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the drooping dead
Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answer'd not with a caress-he died.
The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,

And they were enemies; they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place

Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things

For an unholy usage; they raked up,

And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands

The feeble ashes, and their teeble breath

Blew for a little life, and made a flame

Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld

Each other's aspects-saw, and shriek'd, and died-
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless-
A lump of death-a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still.
And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,

And their masts fell down piecemeal; as they dropp'd
They slept on the abyss without a surge-

The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expired before;
The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them-She was the universe.

And therefore travellers step from out their way
To pay him honor,-and myself whate'er
Your honor pleases,"-then most pleased I shock
From out my pocket's avaricious nook
Some certain coins of silver, which as 'twere
Perforce I gave this man, though I could spare
So much but inconveniently ;-Ye smile,
I see ye, ye profane ones! all the while,
Because my homely phrase the truth would tell.
You are the fools, not I-for I did dwell
With a deep thought, and with a soften'd eye,
On that Old Sexton's natural homily,
In which there was Obscurity and Fame,
The Glory and the Nothing of a Name.

PROMETHEUS.
I.

TITIAN! to whose immortal eyes
The sufferings of mortality,
Seen in their sad reality,
Were not as things that gods despise ;
What was thy pity's recompense?

A silent suffering, and intense;
The rock, the vulture, and the chain
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show,
The suffocating sense of wo,

Which speaks but in its loneliness,
And then is jealous lest the sky
Should have a listener, nor will sigh
Until its voice is echoless.

II.

Titian! to thee the strife was given Between the suffering and the will, Which torture where they cannot kill; And the inexorable Heaven,

And the deaf tyranny of Fate,

The ruling principle of Hate,
Which for its pleasure doth create
The things it may annihilate,
Refused thee even the boon to die:
The wretched gift eternity

Was thine-and thou hast borne it well.
All that the Thunderer wrung from thee,
Was but the menace which flung back
On him the torments of thy rack;
The fate thou didst so well foresee,
But would not to appease him tell;
And in thy Silence was his Sentence,
And in his Soul a vain repentance,
And evil dread so ill dissembled

That in his hand the lightnings trembled.

III.

Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,
To render with thy precepts less
The sum of human wretchedness,
And strengthen man with his own mind;
But baffled as thou wert from high,

Still in thy patient energy,

In the endurance, and repulse

Of thine impenetrable Spirit,

Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse, A mighty lesson we inherit:

Thou art a symbol and a sign

To mortals of their fate and force;
Like thee, Man is in part divine,

A troubled stream from a pure source;
And Man in portions can foresee
His own funereal destiny;

His wretchedness, and his resistance,
And his sad unallied existence:
To which his Spirit may oppose
Itself-an equal to all woes,

And a firm will, and a deep sense,
Which even in torture can descry

Its own concenter'd recompense, Triumphant where it dares defy, And making Death a Victory.

THE PRAYER OF NATURE.

FATHER of Light! great God of Heaven!
Hear'st thou the accents of despair?
Can guilt like man's be e'er forgiven?
Can vice atone for crimes by prayer?

Father of Light, on thee I call!

Thou see'st my soul is dark within; Thou who canst mark the sparrow's fall, Avert from me the death of sin.

No shrine I seek to sects unknown;
Oh point to me the path of truth!
Thy drend omnipotence I own;

Spare, yet amend, the faults of youth.

Let bigots rear a gloomy fane,

Let superstition hail the pile, Let priests, to spread their suble reign With tales of mystic rites beguile.

Shall man confine his Maker's sway

To Gothic domes of mouldering stone? Thy temple is the face of day;

Earth, ocean, heaven, thy boundless throne

Shall man condemn his race to hell

Unless they bend in pompous form; Tell us that all, for one who fell, Must perish in the mingling storm?

Shall each pretend to reach the skies. Yet doom his brother to expire, Whose soul a different hope supplies, Or doctrines less severe inspire?

Shall these, by creeds they can't expound,
Prepare a fancied bliss or wo?
Shall reptiles, grovelling on the ground,
Their great Creator's purpose know?

Shall those, who live for self alone,

Whose years float on in daily crimeShall they by Faith for guilt atone, And live beyond the bounds of Time?

Father! no prophet's laws I seek,

Thy laws in Nature's works appear;

I own myself corrupt and weak,

Yet will I pray, for thou wilt hear!

Thou, who canst guide the wandering star Through trackless realms of ether's space Who calm'st the elemental war,

Whose hand from pole to pole I trace:

Thou, who in wisdom placed me here,
Who, when thou wilt, can take me hence,
Ah! whilst I tread this earthly sphere,
Extend to me thy wide defence.

To Thee, my God, to Thee I call!
Whatever weal or wo betide,
By thy command I rise or fall,
In thy protection I confide.

If, when this dust to dust restored, My soul shall float on airy wing, How shall thy glorious name adored Inspire her feeble voice to sing!

But, if this fleeting spirit share

With clay the grave's eternal bed, While life yet throbs I raise my prayer, Though doom'd no more to quit the dead.

To Thee I breathe my humble strain,
Grateful for all thy mercies past,
And hope, my God, to thee again
This erring life may fly at last.
28th Dec. 1809

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