Rending the veil of space and time asunder! One ocean feeds the clouds, and streams, and dew;

One sun illumines heaven; one spirit vast
With life and love makes chaos ever new,
As Athens doth the world with thy delight

renew.

VII

Then Rome was, and from thy deep bosom fairest,
Like a wolf-cub from a Cadmean Mænad,
She drew the milk of greatness, though thy dearest
From that Elysian food was yet unweaned;
And many a deed of terrible uprightness

By thy sweet love was sanctified;
And in thy smile, and by thy side,
Saintly Camillus lived, and firm Atilius died.
But when tears stained thy robe of vestal
whiteness,

And gold profaned thy Capitolian throne,
Thou didst desert, with spirit-winged lightness,
The senate of the tyrants: they sunk prone
Slaves of one tyrant. Palatinus sighed

Faint echoes of Ionian song; that tone
Thou didst delay to hear, lamenting to disown.

VIII

From what Hyrcanian glen or frozen hill,
Or piny promontory of the Arctic main,
Or utmost islet inaccessible,

Didst thou lament the ruin of thy reign,
Teaching the woods and waves, and desert rocks,
And every Naiad's ice-cold urn,
To talk in echoes sad and stern,

Of that sublimest lore which man had dared unlearn?

For neither didst thou watch the wizard flocks Of the Scald's dreams, nor haunt the Druid's sleep.

What if the tears rained through thy shattered locks

Were quickly dried? for thou didst groan, not weep,

When from its sea of death, to kill and burn,
The Galilean serpent forth did creep,

And made thy world an undistinguishable heap.

IX

A thousand years the Earth cried, Where art thou?

And then the shadow of thy coming fell
On Saxon Alfred's olive-cinctured brow;
And many a warrior-peopled citadel,

Like rocks which fire lifts out of the flat deep,
Arose in sacred Italy,

Frowning o'er the tempestuous sea

Of kings, and priests, and slaves, in tower-crowned majesty ;

That multitudinous anarchy did sweep

And burst around their walls, like idle foam, Whilst from the human spirit's deepest deep, Strange melody with love and awe struck

dumb Dissonant arms; and Art, which cannot die,

With divine wand traced on our earthly home Fit imagery to pave heaven's everlasting dome.

X

Thou huntress swifter than the Moon! thou terror Of the world's wolves! thou bearer of the quiver,

Whose sun-like shafts pierce tempest-wingèd Error,

As light may pierce the clouds when they dis

sever

In the calm regions of the orient day!

Luther caught thy wakening glance; Like lightning, from his leaden lance Reflected, it dissolved the visions of the trance In which, as in a tomb, the nations lay; And England's prophets hailed thee as their queen,

In

songs whose music cannot pass away, Though it must flow forever; not unseen Before the spirit-sighted countenance

Of Milton didst thou pass, from the sad scene Beyond whose night he saw, with a dejected mien.

XI

The eager hours and unreluctant years
As on a dawn-illumined mountain stood,
Trampling to silence their loud hopes and fears,
Darkening each other with their multitude,
And cried aloud, Liberty! Indignation
Answered Pity from her cave;
Death grew pale within the grave,
And Desolation howled to the destroyer, Save!
When, like heaven's sun girt by the exhalation
Of its own glorious light, thou didst arise,

Chasing thy foes from nation unto nation

Like shadows: as if day had cloven the skies At dreaming midnight o'er the western wave, Men started, staggering with a glad surprise, Under the lightnings of thine unfamiliar eyes.

· XII

Thou heaven of earth! what spells could pall thee then,

In ominous eclipse? a thousand years, Bred from the slime of deep oppression's den, Dyed all thy liquid light with blood and tears, Till thy sweet stars could weep the stain away; How like Bacchanals of blood

Round France, the ghastly vintage, stood Destruction's sceptred slaves, and Folly's mitred

brood!

When one, like them, but mightier far than they,

The Anarch of thine own bewildered powers, Rose; armies mingled in obscure array,

Like clouds with clouds, darkening the sacred bowers

Of serene heaven. He, by the past pursued,
Rests with those dead but unforgotten hours,
Whose ghosts scare victor kings in their ances-
tral towers.

XIII

England yet sleeps: was she not called of old?

Spain calls her now, as with its thrilling thunder Vesuvius wakens Etna, and the cold

Snow-crags by its reply are cloven in sunder; O'er the lit waves every Æolian isle

From Pithecusa to Pelorus

Howls, and leaps, and glares in chorus;

They cry, Be dim, ye lamps of heaven suspended o'er us!

Her chains are threads of gold, she need but smile

And they dissolve; but Spain's were links of steel,

Till bit to dust by virtue's keenest file.
Twins of a single destiny! appeal

To the eternal years enthroned before us
In the dim West; impress us from a seal,
All ye have thought and done! Time cannot
dare conceal.

XIV

Tomb of Arminius! render up thy dead

Till, like a standard from a watch-tower's staff, His soul may stream over the tyrant's head; Thy victory shall be his epitaph, Wild Bacchanal of truth's mysterious wine, King-deluded Germany,

His dead spirit lives in thee.

Why do we fear or hope? thou art already free! And thou, lost Paradise of this divine

And glorious world! thou flowery wilderness ! Thou island of eternity! thou shrine

Where desolation clothed with loveliness
Worships the thing thou wert! O Italy,

Gather thy blood into thy heart; repress
The beasts who make their dens thy sacred

palaces.

xiii. 14 us | as, Forman conj.