"Maiden beloved, and Delegate of Heaven! (To her the tutelary Spirit said)

Soon shall the morning struggle into day,
The stormy morning into cloudless noon.
Much hast thou seen, nor all canst understand-
But this be thy best omen-Save thy Country!"
Thus saying, from the answering Maid he passed,
And with him disappeared the heavenly Vision.

Glory to Thee, Father of Earth and Heaven!
All conscious presence of the Universe!
Nature's vast ever-acting energy!

In will, in deed, impulse of All to All!
Whether thy Love with unrefracted ray
Beam on the Prophet's purged eye, or if
Diseasing realms the enthusiast, wild of thought,
Scatter new frenzies on the infected throng,
Thou both inspiring and predooming both,
Fit instruments and best, of perfect end:
Glory to Thee, Father of Earth and Heaven!"

And first a landscape rose

More wild and waste and desolate than where
The white bear, drifting on a field of ice,
Howls to her sundered cubs with piteous rage
And savage agony.

SIBYLLINE LEAVES,

I. POEMS OCCASIONED BY POLITICAL EVENTS OR FEELINGS CONNECTED

WITH THEM.

WHEN I have borne in memory what has tamed
Great nations, how ennobling thoughts depart
When men change swords for ledgers, and desert
The student's bower for gold, some fears unnamed
I had, my country! Am I to be blamed?
But, when I think of Thee, and what thou art,
Verily in the bottom of my heart,

Of those unfilial fears I am ashamed.
But dearly must we prize thee; we who find
In thee a bulwark of the cause of men;
And I by my affection was beguiled.
What wonder if a poet, now and then,
Among the many movements of his mind,
Felt for thee as a Lover or a Child.

WORDSWORTH.

Τὸ μέλλον ἥξει. Καὶ σύ μ' ἐν τάχει παρὼν
*Αγαν γ ̓ ἀληθόμαντιν οἰκτείρας ἐρεῖς.

ARGUMENT.

Eschyl. Agam. 1225.

THE Ode commences with an address to the Divine Providence, that regulates into one vast harmony all the events of time, however calamitous some of them may appear to mortals. The second Strophe calls on men to suspend their private joys and sorrows, and devote them for a while to the cause of human nature in general. The first Epode speaks of the Empress of Russia, who died of an apoplexy on the 17th of November, 1796; having just concluded a subsidiary treaty with the Kings combined against France. The first and second Antistrophe describe the image of the Departing Year, &c. as in a vision. The second Epode prophesies, in anguish of spirit, the downfall of this country.

SPI

I.

PIRIT who sweepest the wild harp of Time!
It is most hard, with an untroubled ear

Thy dark inwoven harmonies to hear!

This Ode was composed on the 24th, 25th, and 26th days of December, 1796: and was first published on the last day of that year.

Yet, mine eye fixed on Heaven's unchanging clime,
Long had I listened, free from mortal fear,
With inward stillness, and a bowed mind;
When lo! its folds far waving on the wind,
I saw the train of the departing Year!
Starting from my silent sadness

Then with no unholy madness,

Ere yet the entered cloud foreclosed my sight,
I raised the impetuous song, and solemnized his flight.

II.

Hither, from the recent tomb,

From the prison's direr gloom,

From distemper's midnight anguish ;

And thence, where poverty doth waste and languish!
Or where, his two bright torches blending,
Love illumines manhood's maze;
Or where, o'er cradled infants bending
Hope has fixed her wishful gaze;
Hither, in perplexed dance,

Ye Woes! ye young-eyed Joys! advance!

By Time's wild harp, and by the hand
Whose indefatigable sweep

Raises its fateful strings from sleep,
I bid you haste, a mixed tumultuous band!
From every private bower,

And each domestic hearth,

Haste for one solemn hour;

And with a loud and yet a louder voice, O'er Nature struggling in portentous birth, Weep and rejoice!

Still echoes the dread name that o'er the earth Let slip the storm, and woke the brood of Hell: