When France her front deep-scarred and gory 51
Concealed with clustering wreaths of glory ;

When, insupportably advancing,
Her arm made mockery of the warrior's tramp ;
While timid looks of fury glancing,

55 Domestic Treason, crushed beneath her fatal stamp, Writhed like a wounded dragon in his gore ;

Then I reproached my fears that would not flee; * And soon,' I said, “shall Wisdom teach her lore In the low huts of them that toil and groan !

60 And, conquering by her happiness alone,

Shall France compel the nations to be free, Tiil Love and Joy look round, and call the earth their own.'

Forgive me, Freedom! O forgive those dreams !
I hear thy voice, I hear thy loud lament,

65 From bleak Helvetia's icy caverns sentI hear thy groans upon her blood-stained streams !

Heroes, that for your peaceful country perished, And ye that, fleeing, spot your mountain-snows

With bleeding wounds ; forgive me, that I cherished 70 One thought that ever blessed your cruel foes !

To scatter rage and traitorous guilt,
Where Peace her jealous home had built ;

A patriot-race to disinherit
Of all that made their stormy wilds so dear ;

75
And with inexpiable spirit
To taint the bloodless freedom of the mountaineer-
O France, that mockest Heaven, adulterous, blind,

And patriot only in pernicious toils, Are these thy boasts, Champion of human kind ? 80

To mix with kings in the low lust of sway,

Yell in the hunt, and share the murderous prey ; To' insult the shrine of Liberty with spoils

From freemen torn ? to tempt and to betray?

The Sensual and the Dark rebel in vain,

85 Slaves by their own compulsion ! In mad game They burst their manacles and wear the name

Of Freedom, graven on a heavier chain !
O Liberty! with profitless endeavour
Have I pursued thee, many a weary hour ;

90 But thou nor swell'st the victor's strain, nor ever Didst breathe thy soul in forms of human power.

Alike from all, howe'er they praise thee, (Nor prayer, nor boastful name delays thee) Alike from Priestcraft's harpy minions,

95 And factious Blasphemy's obscener slaves,

Thou speedest on thy subtle pinions,
The guide of homeless winds, and playmate of the waves!
And there I felt thee!-on that sea-cliff's verge,

Whose pines, scarce travelled by the breeze above,
Had made one murmur with the distant surge !
Yes, while I stood and gazed, my temples bare,
And shot my being through earth, sea, and air,
Possessing all things with intensest love,
O Liberty! my spirit felt thee there.

105 Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

100

CCXXI

ODE TO THE WEST WIND.

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: 0 thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow

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Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air,)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and Preserver; hear, O hear!
Thou on whose stream, ʼmid the steep sky's commotion, 15
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning; there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Mænad, ev’n from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height-
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: O hear!
Thou who didst waken from his summer-dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,

30
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss and flowers

35 So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou For whose path the Atlantic's level powers Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear The sapless foliage of the ocean, know Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear, And tremble and despoil themselves : O hear! If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;

40 45

50

55

A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thv strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,
As then, when to outstrip the skyey speed
Scarce seemed a vision, I would ne'er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
() lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud !
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee : tameless, and swift, and proud.
Make me thy lyre, ev'n as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harrnonies
Will take from both a deep autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit ! be thou me, impetuous One !
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth;
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, iny words among mankind !
Be through my lips to unawakened earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If winter comes, can spring be far behind ?

Percy Bysshe Shelley.

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65

70

CCXXII

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE.

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: 'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,

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But being too happy in thy happiness,
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,

In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,

Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
O for a draught of vintage, that hath been

Cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth, Tasting of Flora and the country-green,

Dance, and Provençal song, and sun-burnt mirth! O for a beaker full of the warm South,

15 Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

And purple-stainèd mouth ;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,

And with thee fade away into the forest dim :
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, 25
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

And leaden-eyed despairs ;
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,

Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow. 30 Away! away! for I will fly to thee,

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy,

Though the dull brain perplexes and retards : Already with thee! tender is the night,

35 And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, Clustered around by all her starry Fays;

But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown

Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways. 40