X. This shall not be thy lot, my blessed child! As deep meets deep; and forests, whose dim shade Yet there are hours when the charged heart must speak, Ev'n in the desert's ear to pour itself, or break! 3 XI. I see an oak before me, it hath been The crown'd one of the woods; and might have flung Its hundred arms to Heaven, still freshly green, But a wild vine around the stem hath clung, From branch to branch close wreaths of bondage throwing, Till the proud tree, before no tempest bowing, Hath shrunk and died, those serpent-folds among. Alas! alas!-what is it that I see? An image of man's mind, land of my sires, with thee! XII. Yet art thou lovely !-Song is on thy hills— With the old tuneful names of Spain's heroic race. XIII. But there was silence one bright, golden day, And from the fields the peasant's voice was gone; Where was the pastor?-where the pipe's wild tone? While to the city's gates each hamlet pour'd its throng. XIV. Silence upon the mountains!-But within A dead pause following each-like that which parts And sounds of thickening steps, like thunder-rain, XV. What pageant's hour approach'd?-The sullen gate They that had learn'd, in cells of secret gloom, Things that bewilder'd !—O'er their dazzled sight, 'They lifted their wan hands, and cower'd before the light! XVI. To this man brings his brother!-Some were there, Who with their desolation had entwin'd Fierce strength, and girt the sternness of despair And there were some, from whom the very mind Had been wrung out: they smil'd-oh! startling smile Whence man's high soul is fled!-where doth it sleep the while? XVII But onward moved the melancholy train, Was hush'd and its one soul bound in the thought of death! XVIII. It might be that amidst the countless throng, There swell'd some heart with Pity's weight oppress'd, For the wide stream of human love is strong; Some eye with glistening smiles,—and therefore all were still XIX. All still-youth, courage, strength!-a winter laid, A chain of palsy, cast on might and mind! Still, as at noon a southern forest's shade, They stood, those breathless masses of mankind; Still, as a frozen torrent !—but the wave Soon leaps to foaming freedom-they, the brave, Endured-they saw the martyr's place assign'd In the red flames-whence is the withering spell That numbs each human pulse?-they saw, and thought it well. |