He heard it, but he heeded not-his eyes Were with his heart, and that was far away; He reck'd not of the life he lost nor prize, But where his rude hut by the Danube lay, There were his young barbarians all at play, There was their Dacian mother-he, their sire, Butcher'd to make a Roman holidayAll this rush'd with his blood-Shall he expire And unavenged? Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire!

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But here, where Murder breathed her bloody steam; And here, where buzzing nations choked the ways, And roar'd or murmur'd like a mountain stream Dashing or winding as its torrent strays; Here, where the Roman million's blame or praise Was death or life, the playthings of a crowd, My voice sounds much—and fall the stars' faint rays On the arena void-seats crush'd-walls bow'dAnd galleries, where my steps seem echoes strangely loud.

A ruin-yet what ruin! from its mass
Walls, palaces, half-cities, have been rear'd;
Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pass,

And marvel where the spoil could have appear'd. 40
Hath it indeed been plunder'd, or but clear'd ?
Alas! developed, opens the decay,

When the colossal fabric's form is near'd:
It will not bear the brightness of the day,
Which streams too much on all years, man, have reft

away.

But when the rising moon begins to climb Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there; When the stars twinkle through the loops of time, And the low night-breeze waves along the air The garland-forest, which the gray walls wear, Like laurels on the bald first Caesar's head; When the light shines serene but doth not glare, Then in this magic circle raise the dead: Heroes have trod this spot-'tis on their dust ye tread.

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'While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand; 'When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall;

" And when Rome falls-the World.' From our
own land

Thus spake the pilgrims o'er this mighty wall
In Saxon times, which we are wont to call
Ancient; and these three mortal things are still 60
On their foundations, and unalter'd all;
Rome and her Ruin past Redemption's skill,
The World, the same wide den-of thieves, or what ye

will.

DEATH OF THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE
(CANTO IV, clxvii-clxxii)

HARK! forth from the abyss a voice proceeds,
A long low distant murmur of dread sound,
Such as arises when a nation bleeds

With some deep and immedicable wound;
Through storm and darkness yawns the rending

ground,

The gulf is thick with phantoms, but the chief

Seems royal still, though with her head discrown'd,
And pale, but lovely, with maternal grief
She clasps a babe, to whom her breast yields no relief.

Scion of chiefs and monarchs, where art thou?
Fond hope of many nations, art thou dead?
Could not the grave forget thee, and lay low
Some less majestic, less beloved head?
In the sad midnight, while thy heart still bled,
The mother of a moment, o'er thy boy,
Death hush'd that pang for ever: with thee fled

IO

The present happiness and promised joy

Which fill'd the imperial isles so full it seem'd to cloy.

Peasants bring forth in safety. Can it be,
Oh thou that wert so happy, so adored!
Those who weep not for kings shall weep for thee,
And Freedom's heart, grown heavy, cease to hoard

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Her many griefs for ONE; for she had pour'd
Her orisons for thee, and o'er thy head
Beheld her Iris.-Thou, too, lonely lord,
And desolate consort-vainly wert thou wed!
The husband of a year! the father of the dead!

Of sackcloth was thy wedding garment made; Thy bridal's fruit is ashes: in the dust The fair-hair'd Daughter of the Isles is laid, The love of millions! How we did intrust Futurity to her! and, though it must Darken above our bones, yet fondly deem'd Our children should obey her child, and bless'd Her and her hoped-for seed, whose promise seem’d Like stars to shepherd's eyes:-'twas but a meteor beam'd.

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Woe unto us, not her; for she sleeps well:
The fickle reek of popular breath, the tongue
Of hollow counsel, the false oracle,

Which from the birth of monarchy hath rung
Its knell in princely ears, till the o'erstung
Nations have arm'd in madness, the strange fate
Which tumbles mightiest sovereigns, and hath flung
Against their blind omnipotence a weight
Within the opposing scale, which crushes soon or
late,-

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:

These might have been her destiny; but no, Our hearts deny it and so young, so fair, Good without effort, great without a foe/; But now a bride and mother-and now there! How many ties did that stern moment tear! From thy Sire's to his humblest subject's breast Is link'd the electric chain of that despair, Whose shock was as an earthquake's, and oppfest The land which loved thee so that none could love

thee best.

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I LOVE NOT MAN THE LESS, BUT
NATURE MORE

(CANTO IV, clxxvii-clxxxiv)

OH! that the Desert were my dwelling-place,
With one fair Spirit for my minister,
That I might all forget the human race,
And, hating no one, love but only her!
Ye elements !-in whose ennobling stir
I feel myself exalted-Can ye not
Accord me such a being? Do I err
In deeming such inhabit many a spot?
Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar :
I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

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Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean-roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain ;
Man marks the earth with ruin-his control
Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknell’d, uncoffin'd, and unknown.

His steps are not upon thy paths, thy fields
Are not a spoil for him,-thou dost arise

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And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,

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Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies, And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray And howling, to his Gods, where haply lies His petty hope in some near port or bay, And dashest him again to earth :-there let him lay.

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals,
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war-
These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the Armada's pride or spoils of Trafalgar.

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Thy shores are empires, changed in all save theeAssyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they? Thy waters wash'd them power while they were free, And many a tyrant since; their shores obey The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay Has dried up realms to deserts:-not so thou ;Unchangeable, save to thy wild waves' play, Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow: Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy
I wanton'd with thy breakers-they to me

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Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,-
Calm or convulsed, in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
Dark-heaving-boundless, endless, and sublime,
The image of eternity, the throne

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime
The monsters of the deep are made; each zone
Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

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