Tending the flocks no more to bleed for thee, -
The songs of maidens pressing with white feet
The vintage on thine altars poured no more,
The murmurous bliss of lovers, underneath
Dim grape-vine bowers, the hive-like hum
Of peaceful commonwealths, where sunburnt Toil
Reaps for itself the rich earth made its own
By its own labor, lightened with glad hymns
To an omnipotence which thy mad bolts
Would cope with as a spark with the vast sea, -
Even the spirit of true love and peace,
Duty's sure recompense through life and death, -
These are such harvests as all master-spirits
Reap, haply not on earth, but reap no less

Because the sheaves are bound by hands not theirs ;
These are the bloodless daggers wherewithal
They stab fallen tyrants, this their high revenge:

For their best part of life on earth is when,
Long after death, prisoned and pent no more,

Their thoughts, their wild dreams even, have become
Part of the necessary air men breathe;

When, like the moon, herself behind a cloud,

They shed down light before us on life's sea,

That cheers us to steer onward still in hope.
Earth with her twining memories ivies o'er
Their holy sepulchres; the chainless sea,
In tempest or wide calm, repeats their thoughts;
The lightning and the thunder, all free things,
Have legends of them for the ears of men.
All other glories are as falling stars,

But universal Nature watches theirs :
Such strength is won by love of human kind.

Not that I feel that hunger after fame,

Which souls of a half-greatness are beset with;

But that the memory of noble deeds
Cries shame upon the idle and the vile,
And keeps the heart of man forever up
To the heroic level of old time.

To be forgot at first is little pain

To a heart conscious of such high intent
As must be deathless on the lips of men;
But, having been a name, to sink and be
A something which the world can do without,
Which, having been or not, would never change
The lightest pulse of fate, this is indeed

A cup of bitterness the worst to taste,
And this thy heart shall empty to the dregs.
Endless despair shall be thy Caucasus,
And memory thy vulture; thou wilt find
Oblivion far lonelier than this peak,
Behold thy destiny! Thou think'st it much
That I should brave thee, miserable god!
But I have braved a mightier than thou,

Even the tempting of this soaring heart,

Which might have made me, scarcely less than thou,
A god among my brethren weak and blind,-
Scarce less than thou, a pitiable thing

To be down-trodden into darkness soon.
But now I am above thee, for thou art

The bungling workmanship of fear, the block
That awes the swart Barbarian; but I

Am what myself have made,

a nature wise

With finding in itself the types of all,

With watching from the dim verge of the time
What things to be are visible in the gleams
Thrown forward on them from the luminous past,
Wise with the history of its own frail heart,
With reverence of sorrow, and with love
Broad as the world, for freedom and for man.

Thou and all strength shall crumble, except Love,
By whom and for whose glory ye shall cease:
And, when thou art but a dim moaning heard
From out the pitiless gloom of Chaos, I
Shall be a power and a memory,

A name to fright all tyrants with, a light
Unsetting as the pole-star, a great voice
Heard in the breathless pauses of the fight
By truth and freedom ever waged with wrong;
Clear as a silver trumpet, to awake

Huge echoes that from age to age live on

In kindred spirits, giving them a sense

Of boundless power from boundless suffering wrung:
And many a glazing eye shall smile to see
The memory of my triumph, (for to meet
Wrong with endurance, and to overcome
The present with a heart that looks beyond,
Is triumph,) like a prophet eagle, perch
Upon the sacred banner of the Right.
Evil springs up, and flowers, and bears no seed,
And feeds the green earth with its swift decay
› Leaving it richer for the growth of truth;
But Good, once put in action or in thought,

Like a strong oak, doth from its boughs shed down
The ripe germs of a forest. Thou, weak god,
Shalt fade and be forgotten! but this soul,
Fresh-living still in the serene abyss,

-

In every heaving shall partake, that grows
From heart to heart among the sons of men, -
As the ominous hum before the earthquake runs
Far through the Ægean from roused isle to isle, —
Foreboding wreck to palaces and shrines,
And mighty rents in many a cavernous error
That darkens the free light to man: - This heart,
Unscarred by thy grim vulture, as the truth

Grows but more lovely 'neath the beaks and claws
Of Harpies blind that fain would soil it, shall
In all the throbbing exultations share
That wait on freedom's triumphs, and in all
The glorious agonies of martyr spirits, —
Sharp lightning-throes to split the jagged clouds
That veil the future, showing them the end,-
Pain's thorny crown for constancy and truth,
Girding the temples like a wreath of stars.
This is the thought that, like a fabled laurel,
Makes my faith thunder-proof; and thy dread bolts
Fall on me like the silent flakes of snow

On the hoar brows of aged Caucasus :

But, O thought far more blissful, they can rend
This cloud of flesh, and make my soul a star!

Unleash thy crouching thunders now, O Jove!
Free this high heart, which, a poor captive long,
Doth knock to be let forth, this heart which still,
In its invincible manhood, overtops

Thy puny godship, as this mountain doth
The pines that moss its roots. O even now,
While from my peak of suffering I look down,
Beholding with a far-spread gush of hope
The sunrise of that Beauty, in whose face,
Shone all around with love, no man shall look

But straightway like a god he is uplift

Unto the throne long empty for his sake,

And clearly oft foreshadowed in wide dreams
By his free inward nature, which nor thou,
Nor any anarch after thee, can bind

From working its great doom,

now, now set free

This essence, not to die, but to become

Part of that awful Presence which doth haunt

The palaces of tyrants, to hunt off

With its grim eyes and fearful whisperings
And hideous sense of utter loneliness,

All hope of safety, all desire of peace,

All but the loathed forefeeling of blank death,

Part of that spirit which doth ever brood

In patient calm on the unpilfered nest

Of man's deep heart, till mighty thoughts grow fledged
To sail with darkening shadow o'er the world,
Filling with dread such souls as dare not trust
In the unfailing energy of Good,

Until they swoop, and their pale quarry make
Of some o'erbloated wrong, that spirit which
Scatters great hopes in the seed-field of man,
Like acorns among grain, to grow and be
A roof for freedom in all coming time!
But no, this cannot be; for ages yet,
In solitude unbroken shall I hear
The angry Caspian to the Euxine shout,
And Euxine answer with a muffled roar,
On either side storming the giant walls
Of Caucasus with leagues of climbing foam,
(Less from my height, than flakes of downy snow,)
That draw back baffled but to hurl again,
Snatched up in wrath and horrible turmoil,
Mountain on mountain, as the Titans erst,
My brethren, scaling the high seat of Jove,
Heaved Pelion upon Ossa's shoulders broad
In vain emprise. The moon will come and go
With her monotonous vicissitude;

Once beautiful, when I was free to walk
Among my fellows, and to interchange

The influence benign of loving eyes,

But now by aged use grown wearisome;

False thought, most false ! for how could I endure