With Freedom's lion-banner
Britannia rules the waves;
Whilst your BROAD STONE OF HONOR
Is still the camp of slaves.
For shame, for glory's sake,
Wake, Allemannians, wake,
And thy tyrants now that whelm
Half the world shall quail and flee,
When your realm shall be the realm
Of the free- - of the free!
For your father Armin's Sprite
Calls down from heaven, that ye
Shall gird you for the fight,
And be free! - and be free!
ON A PICTURE OF A GIRL IN THE ATTITUDE OF PRAYER.
[By the artist Gruse, in the possession of Lady Stepney.]
WAS man e'er doomed that beauty made
By mimic heart should haunt him;
Like Orpheus, I adore a shade,
And dote upon a phantom.
Thou maid that in my inmost thought
Art fancifully sainted,
Why liv'st thou not - why art thou naught But canvas sweetly painted?
Whose looks seem lifted to the skies,
Too pure for love of mortals
As if they drew angelic eyes
To greet thee at heaven's portals.
Yet loveliness has here no grace,
Abstracted or ideal
Art ne'er but from a living face
Drew looks so seeming real.
What wert thou, maid?-thy life-thy name Oblivion hides in mystery;
Though from thy face my heart could frame
A long romantic history.
Transported to thy time I seem,
Though dust thy coffin covers-
And hear the songs in fancy's dream,
Of thy devoted lovers.
How witching must have been thy breath -
How sweet the living charmer-
Whose every semblance after death
Can make the heart grow warmer!
Adieu, the charms that vainly move
My soul in their possession—
That prompt my lips to speak of love,
Yet rob them of expression.
Yet thee, dear picture, to have praised
Was but a poet's duty;
And shame to him that ever gazed
Impassive on thy beauty!
ON THE VIEW FROM ST. LEONARD'S.
HAIL to thy face and odors, glorious Sea!
'T were thanklessness in me to bless thee not,
Great beauteous Being! in whose breath and smile
My heart beats calmer, and my very mind
Inhales salubrious thoughts. How welcomer
Thy murmurs than the murmurs of the world!
Though like the world thou fluctuatest, thy din
To me is peace, thy restlessness repose.
Even gladly I exchange yon spring-green lanes,
With all the darling field-flowers in their prime,
And gardens haunted by the nightingale's
Long trills and gushing ecstasies of song,
For these wild headlands, and the sea-mew's clang.
With thee beneath my windows, pleasant Sea,
I long not to o'erlook earth's fairest glades
green savannas. -Earth has not a plain So boundless or so beautiful as thine;
The eagle's vision cannot take it in:
The lightning's wing, too weak to sweep its space,
Sinks half-way o'er it like a wearied bird :
It is the mirror of the stars,' where all
Their hosts within the concave firmament,
Gay marching to the music of the spheres,
Can see themselves at once.
Of rural landscape are there lights and shades
Of more harmonious dance and play than thine.
How vividly this moment brightens forth,
Between gray parallel and leaden breadths,
A belt of hues that stripes thee many a league,
Flushed like the rainbow, or the ringdove's neck,
And giving to the glancing sea-bird's wing
The semblance of a meteor.
Chameleon-like thou changest, but there's love
In all thy change, and constant sympathy
With yonder Sky-thy Mistress; from her brow
Thou tak'st thy moods and wear'st her colors on
Thy faithful bosom; morning's milky white,
Noon's sapphire, or the saffron glow of eve;
And all thy balmier hours, fair Element,
Have such divine complexion-crispéd smiles,
Luxuriant heavings, and sweet whisperings,
That little is the wonder Love's own Queen
From thee of old was fabled to have sprung-
Creation's common! which no human power
Can parcel or enclose; the lordliest floods
And cataracts that the tiny hands of man
Can tame, conduct or bound, are drops of dew
To thee that could'st subdue the Earth itself,
And brook'st commandment from the heavens alone
For marshalling thy waves
Yet, potent Sea!
How placidly thy moist lips speak even now
Along yon sparkling shingles! Who can be
So fanciless as to feel no gratitude
That power and grandeur can be so serene,
Soothing the home-bound navy's peaceful way,
And rocking even the fisher's little bark
As gently as a mother rocks her child?
The inhabitants of other worlds behold
Our orb more lucid for thy spacious share
On earth's rotundity; and is he not
A blind worm in the dust, great Deep, the man
Who sees not or who seeing has no joy
In thy magnificence? What though thou art
Unconscious and material,-thou canst reach
The inmost immaterial mind's recess,
And with thy tints and motion stir its chords
To music, like the light on Memnon's lyre!
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