1495

1500

1505

1510

1515

Oh, happier thought! can we be made the same:
It is enough in sooth that once we bore

These fardels of the heart the heart whose sweat

was gore.

CLXVII.

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.

CLXVIII.

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
The present happiness and promised joy

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

CLXIX.

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

1520

1525

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!

CLXX.

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 1530 Like stars to shepherds' eyes: 't was but a meteor

1535

1540

beam'd.

CLXXI.

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'er-stung
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,

CLXXII.

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!

1545

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 opprest The land which loved thee so that none could love thee best.

1550

1555

CLXXIII.

Lo, Nemi! navell'd in the woody hills

So far, that the uprooting wind which tears
The oak from his foundation, and which spills
The ocean o'er its boundary, and bears
Its foam against the skies, reluctant spares
The oval mirror of thy glassy lake;-

And, calm as cherish'd hate, its surface wears
A deep cold settled aspect nought can shake,
All coil'd into itself and round, as sleeps the snake.

1560

1565

1570

CLXXIV.

And near Albano's scarce divided waves
Shine from a sister valley; and afar

The Tiber winds, and the broad ocean laves
The Latian coast where sprung the Epic war,
'Arms and the Man,' whose re-ascending star
Rose o'er an empire: but beneath thy right
Tully reposed from Rome; and where yon bar
Of girdling mountains intercepts the sight
The Sabine farm was till'd, the weary bard's de-
light.

CLXXV..

But I forget. My Pilgrim's shrine is won,
And he and I must part- so let it be :
His task and mine alike are nearly done;
Yet once more let us look upon the sea;

The midland ocean breaks on him and me,
And from the Alban Mount we now behold

Our friend of youth, that ocean, which when we
Beheld it last by Calpe's rock unfold

1575 Those waves, we follow'd on till the dark Euxine

1580

1585

1590

1595

roll'd

CLXXVI.

Upon the blue Symplegades. Long years --
Long, though not very many-since have done
Their work on both; some suffering and some
tears

Have left us nearly where we had begun: Yet not in vain our mortal race hath run; We have had our reward, and it is here, That we can yet feel gladden'd by the sun, And reap from earth, sea, joy almost as dear As if there were no man to trouble what is clear.

CLXXVII.

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 f

CLXXVIII.

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:

1600

1605

1610

1615

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 can not all conceal.

CLXXIX.

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.

CLXXX.

His steps are not upon thy paths, thy fields
Are not a spoil for him, thou dost arise
And shake him from thee; the vile strength he
wields

For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,
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,

1620 And dashest him again to earth: there let him

lay.

CLXXXI.

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