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Then, not the spirit's strife,
Nor sickening pangs at sight of conquering crime,
Nor anxious watching of an evil time,

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Had worn his chords of life :
Nor here, nor thus with tears
Untimely shed, but there whence o'er the sea
The great Volcano looks, his rest might be,
The close of prosperous years.
No! Different hearts are bribed ;
And therefore, in his cause's sad eclipse,
Here died he, with “Palermo' on his lips,
A poor man, and proscribed.
Wrecked all thy hopes, O friend,-
Hopes for thyself, thine Italy, thine own, -
High gifts defeated of their due renown, -
Long toil—and this the end !
The end ? not ours to scan :
Yet grieve not, children, for your father's worth ;
Oh! never wish that in his native earth
He lay, a baser man.
What to the dead avail
The chance success, the blundering praise of fame?
Oh! rather trust, somewhere the noble aim

35 Is crowned, though here it fail. Kind, generous, true wert thou : This meed at least to goodness must belong, That such it was. Farewell ; the world's great wrong Is righted for thee now. Rest in thy foreign grave, Sicilian! whom our English hearts have loved, Italian! such as Dante had approved, An exile—not a slave !

Henry Lushington.

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40 CCXVI

HYMN BEFORE SUNRISE, IN THE VALE OF

CHAMOUNI.

Hast thou a charm to stay the morning star
In his steep course ? So long he seems to pause
On thy bald awful head, O sovran Blanc!
The Arvé and Arveiron at thy base
Rave ceaselessly ; but thou, niost awful Form! 5
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently! Around thee and above
Deep is the air, and dark, substantial, black,
An ebon mass : methinks thou piercest it
As with a wedge! But when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity!
o dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee,
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,
Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer 15
I worshipped the Invisible alone.

Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody,
So sweet, we know not we are listening to it,
Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought,
Yea, with my life and life's own secret joy,
Till the dilating soul, enrapt, transfused,
Into the mighty vision passing—there,
As in her natural form, swelled vast to Heaven !

Awake my soul ! not only passive praise Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears,

25 Mute thanks, and secret ecstasy! Awake, Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake! Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my Hymn.

Thou first and chief, sole sovran of the Vale! Oh, struggling with the darkness all the night, 30 And visited all night by troops of stars,

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Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink :
Companion of the morning star at dawn,
Thyself Earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Co-herald : wake, oh wake, and utter praise !

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Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth ?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light;
Who made thee parent of perpetual streains?

And you, ye five wild torrents, fiercely glad! Who called you forth from night and utter death,

40 From dark and icy caverns called you forth, Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks, For ever shattered and the same for ever? Who gave you your invulnerable life, Your strer.gth, your speed, your fury, and your joy, 45 Unceasing thunder and eternal foam ? And who commanded (and the silence came,) Here let the billows stiffen and have rest?

Ye ice-falls ! ye that from the mountain's brow Adown enormous ravines slope amain

50 Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice, And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge ! Motionless torrents! silent cataracts ! Who made you glorious as the gates of Heaven Beneath the keen full moon ? Who bade the sun 55 Clothe you with rainbows ? Who, with living flowers Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet ?God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations, Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God !

59 God ! sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice ! Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds ! And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow, And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God !

Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost ! Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest !

65 Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain-storm! Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds !

Ye signs and wonders of the elements,
Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise !

Thou, too, hoar Mount ! with thy sky-pointing peaks, Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard,

71 Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene, Into the depth of clouds that veil thy breastThou too again, stupendous Mountain! thou, That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low

75 In adoration, upward from thy base Slow travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears, Solemnly seemest, like a vapoury cloud, To rise before me-rise, oh, ever rise, Rise like a cloud of incense from the earth!

80 Thou kingly Spirit throned among the hills, Thou dread ambassador from Earth to Heaven, Great hierarch ! tell thou the silent sky, And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun, Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God. 85

Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

CCXVII

THE DANISH BOY.

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Between two sister moorland rills
There is a spot that seems to lie
Sacred to flowerets of the hills,
And sacred to the sky.
And in this smooth and open dell
There is a tempest-stricken tree;
A corner-stone by lightning cut,
The last stone of a lonely hut;
And in this dell you see
A thing no storm can e'er destroy,
The shadow of a Danish boy.
In clouds above the lark is heard,
But drops not here to carth for rest;

IO

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Within this lonesome nook the bird
Did never build her nest.
No beast, no bird hath here his home;
Bees, wasted on the breezy air,
Pass high above those fragrant bells
To other flowers; to other dells
Their burdens do they bear.
The Danish boy walks here alone :
The lovely dell is all his own.
A Spirit of noonday is he,
Yet seems a form of flesh and blood;
Nor piping shepherd shall he be,
Nor herd-boy of the wood.
A regal vest of fur he wears,
In colour like a raven's wing ;
It fears not rain, nor wind, nor dew;
But in the storm 'tis fresh and blue
As budding pines in Spring;
His helmet has a vernal grace,
Fresh as the bloom upon his face.
A harp is from his shoulder slung;
Resting the harp upon his knee,
To words of a forgotten tongue
He suits its melody.
Of flocks upon the neighbouring hills
He is the darling and the joy ;
And often, when no cause appears,
The mountain ponies prick their ears,
—They hear the Danish boy,
While in the dell he sings alone
Beside the tree and corner-stone.
There sits he: in his face you spy
No trace of a ferocious air;
Nor ever was a cloudless sky
So steady or so fair.

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