While, compassing the little mound around,
Degrees and Orders stood, each under each:
Now, like to things within fate's easiest reach,
The power is merged, the pomp a grave has found.
Off with yon cloud, old Snafell! that thine eye
Over three Realms may take its widest range;
And let, for them, thy fountains utter strange
Voices, thy winds break forth in prophecy,
If the whole State must suffer mortal change,
Like Mona's miniature of sovereignty.
DESPOND Who will, I heard a voice exclaim,
Though fierce the assault, and shattered the de
It cannot be that Britain's social frame,
The glorious work of time and providence,
Before a flying season's rash pretence
Should fall; that she, whose virtue put to shame,
When Europe prostrate lay, the Conqueror's aim,
Should perish, self-subverted. Black and dense
The cloud is; but brings that a day of doom
To Liberty? Her sun is up the while,
That orb whose beams round Saxon Alfred shone :
Then laugh, ye innocent Vales! ye Streams,
Nor let one billow of our heaven-blest Isle
Toss in the fanning wind a humbler plume."
That he might fly, where no one could pursue,
From this dull Monster and her sooty crew;
And, as a God, light on thy topmost cliff?
Impotent wish! which reason would despise
If the mind knew no union of extremes,
No natural bond between the boldest schemes
Ambition frames, and heart-humilities.
Beneath stern mountains many a soft vale lies,
And lofty springs give birth to lowly streams.
ON REVISITING DUNOLLY CASTLE.
[See former series, Vol. III. p. 280.]
THE captive Bird was gone; to cliff or moor Perchance had flown, delivered by the storm ; Or he had pined, and sunk to feed the worm: Him found we not: but, climbing a tall tower, There saw, impaved with rude fidelity
Of art mosaic, in a roofless floor,
An Eagle with stretched wings, but beamless
An Eagle that could neither wail nor soar.
Effigy of the vanished, (shall I dare
To call thee so?) or symbol of fierce deeds
And of the towering courage which past times
Rejoiced in, take, whate'er thou be, a share
Not undeserved, of the memorial rhymes
That animate my way where'er it leads!
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