24. "The seeds are sleeping in the soil.
The tyrant peoples dungeons with his prey;
Pale victims on the guarded scaffold smile
Because they cannot speak; and, day by day,
The moon of wasting science wanes away
Among her stars; and in that darkness vast
The sons of earth to their foul idols pray;
And grey priests triumph; and like blight or blast
A shade of selfish care o'er human looks is cast.
25. "This is the winter of the world;-and here
We die, even as the winds of autumn fade,
Expiring in the frore and foggy air.-
Behold! Spring comes, though we must pass who made
The promise of its birth, even as the shade
Which from our death, as from a mountain, flings
The future, a broad sunrise; thus arrayed
As with the plumes of overshadowing wings,
From its dark gulf of chains earth like an eagle springs.
26. "O dearest love! we shall be dead and cold
Before this morn may on the world arise:
Wouldst thou the glory of its dawn behold?
Alas! gaze not on me, but turn thine eyes
On thine own heart-it is a paradise
Which everlasting Spring has made its own:
And, while drear winter fills the naked skies,
Sweet streams of sunny thought, and flowers fresh blown, Are there, and weave their sounds and odours into one.
27. "In their own hearts the earnest of the hope
Which made them great the good will ever find;
And, though some envious shade may interlope
Between the effect and it, one comes behind
Who aye the future to the past will bind-
Necessity, whose sightless strength for ever
Evil with evil, good with good, must wind
In bands of union which no power may sever⚫
They must bring forth their kind, and be divided never!
28. "The good and mighty of departed ages
Are in their graves,-the innocent and free,
Heroes, and poets, and prevailing sages,
Who leave the vesture of their majesty
To adorn and clothe this naked world;-and we
Are like to them. Such perish; but they leave
All hope or love or truth or liberty
Whose forms their mighty spirits could conceive,
To be a rule and law to ages that survive.
29. "So be the turf heaped over our remains
Even in our happy youth, and that strange lot,
Whate'er it be, when in these mingling veins
The blood is still, be ours; let sense and thought
Pass from our being, or be numbered not
Among the things that are; let those who come
Behind, for whom our steadfast will has bought
A calm inheritance, a glorious doom,
Insult with careless tread our undivided tomb!
"Our many thoughts and deeds, our life and love,
Our happiness, and all that we have been,
Immortally must live and burn and move
When we shall be no more. The world has seen
A type of peace; and, as some most serene
And lovely spot to a poor maniac's eye,
After long years, some sweet and moving scene
Of youthful hope, returning suddenly,
Quells his long madness-thus man shall remember thec.
"And calumny meanwhile shall feed on us
As worms devour the dead, and near the throne
And at the altar most accepted thus
Shall sneers and curses be;-what we have done
None shall dare vouch, though it be truly known.
That record shall remain when they must pass
Who built their pride on its oblivion,
And fame, in human hope which sculptured was, Survive the perished scrolls of unenduring brass :32. "The while we two, beloved, must depart,
And Sense and Reason, those enchanters fair
Whose wand of power is hope, would bid the heart
That gazed beyond the wormy grave despair.
These eyes, these lips, this blood, seem darkly there
To fade in hideous ruin; no calm sleep,
Peopling with golden dreams the stagnant air,
Seems our obscure and rotting eyes to steep
In joy;-but senseless death-a ruin dark and deep.
33. "These are blind fancies. Reason cannot know
What sense can neither feel nor thought conceive;
There is delusion in the world, and woe,
And fear, and pain. We know not whence we live,
Or why, or how; or what mute Power may give
Their being to each plant and star and beast,
Or even these thoughts.--Come near me! I do weave
A chain I cannot break-I am possessed
With thoughts too swift and strong for one lone human breast., 34. "Yes, yes-thy kiss is sweet, thy lips are warm!
Oh willingly, beloved, would these eyes,
Might they no more drink being from thy form,
Even as to sleep whence we again arise,
Close their faint orbs in death. I fear nor prize
Aught that can now betide, unshared by thee.
Yes, love, when wisdom fails, makes Cythna wise;
Darkness and death, if death be true, must be
Dearer than life and hope if unenjoyed with thee.
"Alas! our thoughts flow on with stream whose waters
Return not to their fountain: earth and heaven,
The ocean and the sun, the clouds their daughters,
Winter and Spring, and morn and noon and even,
All that we are or know, is darkly driven
Towards one gulf.-Lo! what a change is come
Since I first spake-but time shall be forgiven,
Though it change all but thee!" She ceased-night's gloom Meanwhile had fallen on earth from the sky's sunless dome. 36. Though she had ceased, her countenance, uplifted
To heaven, still spake, with solemn glory bright;
Her dark deep eyes, her lips whose motions gifted
The air they breathed with love, her locks undight.
"Fair star of life and love," I cried, "my soul's delight,
Why lookest thou on the crystalline skies?
Oh that my spirit were yon heaven of night
Which gazes on thee with its thousand eyes!"
She turned to me and smiled-that smile was paradise!
1. WAS there a human spirit in the steed,
That thus with his proud voice, ere night was gone,
He broke or linkèd rest? or do indeed
All living things a common nature own,
And thought erect a universal throne,
Where many shapes one tribute ever bear?
And Earth, their mutual mother, does she groan
To see her sons contend? and makes she bare
Her breast, that all in peace its drainless stores may share?
2. I have heard friendly sounds from many a tongue
Which was not human-the lone nightingale
Has answered me with her most soothing song
Out of her ivy bower, when I sate pale
With grief, and sighed beneath; from many a dale
The antelopes who flocked for food have spoken
With happy sounds and motions that avail
Like man's own speech: and such was now the token Of waning night, whose calm by that proud neigh was broken. 3. Each night, that mighty steed bore me abroad,
And I returned with food to our retreat,
And dark intelligence. The blood which flowed
Over the fields had stamed the courser's feet;
Soon the dust rinks that bitter dew.
The vulture and the wild-dog and the snake,
The wolf and the hyena grey, and eat
The dead in horrid truce: their throngs did make,
Behind the steed, a chasm like waves in a ship's wake.
4. For from the utmost realms of earth came pouring
The banded slaves whom every despot sent
At that throned traitor's summons. Like the roaring
Of fire, whose floods the wild deer circumvent
In the scorched pastures of the south; so bent
The armies of the leagued kings around
Their files of steel and flame ;-the continent
Trembled, as with a zone of ruin bound,
Beneath their feet; the sea shook with their navies' sound.
5. From every nation of the earth they came,
The multitude of moving heartless things
Whom slaves call men: obediently they came,
Like sheep whom from the fold the shepherd brings
To the stall, red with blood. Their many kings
Led them thus erring from their native land,—
Tartar and Frank, and millions whom the wings
Of Indian breezes lull; and many a band
The Arctic Anarch sent, and Idumea's sand,
6. Fertile in prodigies and lies.-So there
Strange natures made a brotherhood of ill.
The desert savage ceased to grasp in fear
His Asian shield and bow when, at the will
Of Europe's subtler son, the bolt would kill
Some shepherd sitting on a rock secure ;
But smiles of wondering joy his face would fill,
And savage sympathy. Those slaves impure
Each one the other thus from ill to ill did lure.
7. For traitorously did that foul Tyrant robe
His countenance in lies. Even at the hour
When he was snatched from death, then o'er the globe,
With secret signs from many a mountain tower,
With smoke by day and fire by night, the power
Of kings and priests, those dark conspirators,
He called :-they knew his cause their own, and swore Like wolves and serpents to their mutual wars
Strange truce, with many a rite which earth and heaven abhors. 8. Myriads had come-millions were on their way;
The Tyrant passed, surrounded by the steel
Of hired assassins, through the public way,
Choked with his country's dead ;—his footsteps reel
On the fresh blood-he smiles. Ay, now I feel
I am a king in truth!" he said; and took
His royal seat, and bade the torturing wheel
Be brought, and fire, and pincers, and the hook,
And scorpions, that his soul on its revenge might look.
9. "But first go slay the rebels.-Why return
The victor bands?" he said. Millions yet live, Of whom the weakest with one word might turn The scales of victory yet; let none survive
But those within the walls. Each fifth shall give
The expiation for his brethren, here.-
Go forth, and waste and kill.”—“O king, forgive
My speech," a soldier answered; "but we fear
The spirits of the night, and morn is drawing near.
10. "For we were slaying still without remorse,
And now that dreadful chief beneath my hand
Defenceless lay, when on a hell-black horse
An angel bright as day, waving a brand
Which flashed among the stars, passed."-"Dost thou stand
Parleying with me, thou wretch?" the king replied.
"Slaves, bind him to the wheel; and of this band
Whoso will drag that woman to his side
That scared him thus may burn his dearest foe beside ;
“And gold and glory shall be his.-Go forth!"
They rushed into the plain.-Loud was the roar
Of their career: the horsemen shook the earth;
The wheeled artillery's speed the pavement tore;
The infantry, file after file, did pour
Their clouds on the utmost hills. Five days they slew
Among the wasted fields; the sixth saw gore
Stream through the city; on the seventh the dew
Of slaughter became stiff, and there was peace anew.
12. Peace in the desert fields and villages,
Between the glutted beasts and mangled dead:
Peace in the silent streets, save when the cries
Of victims, to their fiery judgment led,
Made pale their voiceless lips who seemed to dread,
Even in their dearest kindred, lest some tongue
Be faithless to the fear yet unbetrayed:
Peace in the tyrant's palace, where the throng Waste the triumphal hours in festival and song. 13. Day after day the burning sun rolled on
Över the death-polluted land. It came
Out of the east like fire, and fiercely shone
A lamp of autumn, ripening with its flame
The few lone ears of corn ;—the sky became
Stagnate with heat, so that each cloud and blast
Languished and died; the thirsting air did claim
All moisture, and a rotting vapour passed
From the unburied dead, invisible and fast.
14. First want, then plague, came on the beasts; their food
Failed, and they drew the breath of its decay.
Millions on millions, whom the scent of blood
Had lured, or who from regions far away
Had tracked the hosts in festival array,
From their dark deserts, gaunt and wasting now,
Stalked like fell shades among their perished prey;
In their green eyes a strange disease did glow,
They sank in hideous spasm, or pains severe and slow.
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