Speak! from thy storm-black Heaven O speak aloud! Open thine eye of fire from some uncertain cloud! VI. The voice had ceased, the vision fled; My ears throb hot; my eye-balls start; The soldier on the war-field spread, Death-like he dozes among heaps of dead! (The strife is o'er, the day-light fled, And the night-wind clamours hoarse! See! the starting wretch's head Lies pillowed on a brother's corse!) VII. Not yet enslaved, not wholly vile, Echo to the bleat of flocks; Hence for many a fearless age Has social Quiet loved thy shore ; Nor ever proud invader's rage Or sacked thy towers, or stained thy fields with gore. VIII. Abandoned of Heaven! mad avarice thy guide, O Albion! thy predestined ruins rise, IX. Away, my soul, away! In vain, in vain the birds of warning singAnd hark! I hear the famished brood of prey Flap their lank pennons on the groaning wind! Away, my soul, away! unpartaking of the evil thing, F With daily prayer and daily toil Have wailed my country with a loud Lament. Now I recentre my immortal mind In the deep sabbath of meek self-content; Cleansed from the vaporous passions that bedim God's Image, sister of the Seraphim. ODE TO GEORGIANA, DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE, 66 ON THE TWENTY-FOURTH STANZA IN HER PASSAGE OVER MOUNT GOTHARD." "And hail the chapel! hail the platform wild! With well strung arm, that first preserved his child, PLENDOUR'S fondly fostered child! O Lady, nursed in pomp and pleasure! Light as a dream your days their circlets ran, From all that teaches brotherhood to Man Far, far removed! from want, from hope, from fear! Enchanting music lulled your infant ear, Obeisance, praises soothed your infant heart: Emblasonments and old ancestral crests, With many a bright obtrusive form of art, Detained your eye from nature: stately vests, That veiling strove to deck your charms divine, Rich viands and the pleasurable wine, Were yours unearned by toil; nor could you see The unenjoying toiler's misery. And yet, free Nature's uncorrupted child, Beneath the shaft of Tell! O Lady, nursed in pomp and pleasure! There crowd your finely-fibred frame, A heart as sensitive to joy and fear ? Yet these delight to celebrate Pernicious tales ! insidious strains! The sordid vices and the abject pains, But The doom of ignorance and penury! you, free Nature's uncorrupted child, You hailed the chapel and the platform wild, Where once the Austrian fell Beneath the shaft of Tell! O Lady, nursed in pomp and pleasure! You were a mother! That most holy name, I may not vilely prostitute to those Whose infants owe them less Than the poor caterpillar owes Its gaudy parent fly. You were a mother! at your bosom fed The babes that loved you. You, with laughing eye, Each twilight thought, each nascent feeling read, Which you yourself created. Oh! delight! A second time to be a mother, Without the mother's bitter groans: Another thought, and yet another, By touch, or taste, by looks or tones O'er the growing sense to roll, The mother of your infant's soul! The Angel of the Earth, who, while he guides A moment turned his awful face away; Blest intuitions and communions fleet With living Nature, in her joys and woes! |